For those who work in social media, Instagram has caused its fair share of headaches in 2018. With various changes to the feed algorithm and the introduction of a new ‘Close Friends’ feature on Stories, there’s been a lot to keep track of and adapt to.
Even if you don’t work in social media, Instagram is still one of the most widely used apps on the market today.
This morning, users got more than they bargained for when they saw a completely new interface for looking at posts: side-scrolling. See below. 
I have the new Instagram horizontal scroll interface. I’m sure this will not be met with any backlash WHATSOEVER. But seems maybe intended to reduce mindless vertical scrolling? cc @mosseri comments at the end 😭 pic.twitter.com/fwmtbfjFaf
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) December 27, 2018
Within a brief period of time, the update was reversed. As it turns out, it was all one major mistake.
Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri commented on the flub. Instagram also commented from their official account, but told a different story.
Sorry about that, this was supposed to be a very small test but we went broader than we anticipated. ????
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) December 27, 2018
Due to a bug, some users saw a change to the way their feed appears today. We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal. We apologize for any confusion.
— Instagram (@instagram) December 27, 2018
Fortunately, this isn’t a permanent change and doesn’t seem like it will be happening anytime soon. Even more fortunate, perhaps, is that Instagram has now seen how universally hated this new interface would be if it were actually implemented.
