Digiday Publishing Summit:

Hear from execs at The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, Trusted Media Brands and many others

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Instagram brings notifications to desktop users

Instagram has added a notifications tab to its mostly-ignored desktop website.

In an update rolled out quietly late Tuesday, desktop users of the photo-sharing service now see a stripped-down version of the app’s activity tab, showing people recent comments, likes and new followers in the top right corner after logging into Instagram.com.

Still, even with the enhancement, Instagram on desktop largely remains untouched since its launch three years ago. Users still can’t upload pictures, view the “Following” tab or send each other photos using the direct messaging feature. The Facebook-owned app did, however, bring search to the Web last year and has given it a cosmetic upgrade.

Traffic to Instagram’s desktop version has largely remained stagnant over the past six months, according to data from comScore. The platform boasts 400 million active members. But last month, the site attracted 17.8 million uniques in the U.S., down from its high last September when it attracted 21.3 million visitors. Of course, traffic on mobile has made up for the loss, growing month-over-month during the same time period, attracting 95.8 million U.S. visitors on mobile last month.

Instagram did not immediately reply for comment.

More in Media

Google AI Overviews linked to 25% drop in publisher referral traffic, new data shows

Organic search referral traffic from Google is declining broadly, with the majority of DCN member sites – spanning both news and entertainment – experiencing traffic losses from Google search between 1% and 25%.

Media Briefing: Amazon’s off-site ad push is becoming publishers’ post-cookie playbook

Amazon is fast becoming a partner du jour for publishers: a kind of post-cookie data wingman that’s helping them monetize the approximate 70 percent of the open web that’s now unaddressable. 

Despite the hype, publishers aren’t prioritizing GEO

Even though referral traffic is drying up, most publishers are skeptical of the hype around generative search optimization.