Seeing what your friends and family liked on Instagram can be fascinating, you can have an idea of what they love and the user profiles they like the most. Seeing what other people like is easier on Facebook, your friend’s activities will be displayed right in your news feed.
But things are different on Instagram, you can view this data easily and as a matter of fact, just last year Instagram decided to start hiding likes in some selected regions, and the United States is on the top list of countries where user likes were hidden from the beginning of the update. They did it as a test before rolling the update to all other regions, this was done to depressurize the platform.
A lot of Instagram users are into depression when they notice no one likes their posts and stories, and some have gone to the extent of committing suicide just because no one likes their post.
Millions of users are into depression and it’s definitely one of the major reasons why Instagram decided to hide likes in certain regions where they believe this decision will help relieve the pressure of the desire to have likes on Instagram, and later on they roll the update worldwide. We’ll discuss seeing likes on Instagram and other possible actions you can monitor for other users on the platform.
Real Facts About Viewing Likes On Instagram
From the beginning, Instagram starts hiding likes for some regions as mentioned, at this time a lot of countries can still view the likes of other users. It’s a new update from Instagram to see how things worked, after some months, the hide likes update was implemented on all accounts.
Meaning that Instagram no longer displays the number of users that liked a post, they will only display the last user that liked the post and “others” will be mentioned. After the update, the message displayed will look like “Liked by (username) and others”.
Still, it doesn’t mean Instagram isn’t aware of the number of likes received by each post, they are well aware of it and they just decided to hide the figure from public view including the account owner. The Instagram algorithm can track posts with maximum engagement and they’re the type of content placed on top of search results.
You Can View The Users That Liked A Post
The number of likes received by any post is hidden, but all the users that liked a post can be seen. You view the list of users that liked a post by clicking on “Other”, we’ve mentioned above that the message “Liked by (username) and Others”. The word “Others” will have a link and clicking on it will take you to a page that has a list of all the users that liked that particular post.
If you now want to count the number of users that like a post, you can start counting the users in the list. For posts with hundreds of thousand likes, it will take forever to count, but if the list is moderate you can go ahead count them so that you can know the exact number of users that liked the post.
We can conclude that you can still count the number of likes a post has received, but you have to do it manually which is tiresome.
Why is Instagram hiding likes?
Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri mentioned that they’re concerned with user’s mental health and that they want to depressurize the platform for the young generation. In summary, Instagram mentioned that they want to bring back the joy of posting without the need to worry about competition pressure from other users.
They specifically want users to post real content without the need for validation from other users and they want to ensure that users are posting regularly on the platform. Instagram users no longer need to compete for likes as they did previously.
Are Businesses Affected By The Likes Display Update
Businesses have been affected by this update, we all know that they want to acquire likes by any means and prove that their business is the best even if it means fake likes for the posts and profiles. Let’s take a look at how businesses are affected by the new update;
Buying fake likes won’t work
Once the hide likes update was rolled out on all accounts, the desire to buy fake likes no longer exists. It doesn’t make any sense to buy likes that will not be displayed, you can’t even verify the number of likes you purchased since the figure isn’t now displayed.
Fake likes services went out of business after this update and a lot of businesses on Instagram depend on such services to promote their content, but now they can’t take that advantage.
No more fake engagement
A lot of Instagram users are deceived with fake engagement by businesses that buy meaningless likes. Every business now has to earn real engagement by creating the best content in their niche and they have to promote their content through legit ways.
It’s now difficult to find influencers
True influencers, wherever they’re, they always attract engagements to their profile. Since the number of likes is now hidden, it’s going to be difficult to find real influencers on the platform.
Previously, when the number of likes was visible, you can easily point to influencers by looking at the posts and the number of likes they receive especially when you find that all their posts receive massive likes on a consistent basis.
It’s not easy to start counting the number of likes manually just to locate influencers in the industry, you’ll have to take advantage of tools in order to get that information fast.
Tracking your competitors is not easy
This is another impact of hiding likes on Instagram, it’s not easy to track your competitors since they’ll all now appear to be the same.
You won’t be able to know what your competitors are up to. When the likes are showing up, you can monitor their content which is receiving the maximum attention from users by looking at the number of likes they have.
It’s a great way to monitor their promotion strategy so that you can deliver the same content to your followers. Things are now different and you can’t see posts with the highest number of likes which makes it difficult to spy on your competitors.
These are some of the major impacts of hiding likes on Instagram, and without any doubt, businesses are affected tremendously. But overall, we can say that it’s a good update from Instagram since users running personal accounts can now share content that connects people, and businesses can no longer deceive us with fake likes.
Are There Any Ways To View The Number Of Likes
Instagram has hidden this number but decided to display all the users that liked the post and this is what opens a door for developers to come with tools and apps that are able to count the number of users that liked every post on Instagram.
There are a lot of Instagram tools that make it possible to display the number of likes received by every post without the need to count the likes manually.
These tools won’t be able to show you the number of likes directly in your Instagram account, but rather will be displayed for you within the tool so that you can view the number of likes and the statistics for any post you want. Just search for “Instagram like viewer” and you’ll see a lot of options to choose from.
You have to be careful though, check for real user reviews and testimonials in order to avoid using a tool or software that will cause problems to your Instagram accounts.
If possible, choose a tool that doesn’t require signing into your Instagram account, these types of tools or services already have their own Instagram accounts connected and are using API to enable you to view the data you want.
Now let’s take a look at how to view someone’s likes on Instagram if you want to keep eye on user activities you can do that as well.
How To See What People Like On Instagram
Seeing the photos, videos, and comments users like on Instagram isn’t always easy, especially if you want to do things manually.
Instead of digging through their profile and viewing their activities and likes as you’ve already seen, you have to go through the list and count the number of likes or search for certain users that liked a post.
The best option is to use a service called Snoopreport, this service is capable of monitoring user activities and displaying the statistics for you in one dashboard. There are other tools you can use if Snoopreport isn’t satisfactory to you, but for this post, we’ll demonstrate how you can see what other people like on Instagram using Snoopreport.
How To Use Snoopreport And See What People Like On Instagram
- You need to first sign up for an account with Snoopreport. Head over to the Snoopreport website and click the “Sign up” link. You just need to enter your email and password to get started.
- You’ll then be directed to your dashboard, you’ll be required to add the accounts you want to monitor their activities. You have the option to add multiple accounts and you can remove accounts anytime you want. you just need to add their usernames and if you want to add multiple accounts, you should separate them with a comma or add in a row list.
- Snoopreport is now able to track the added accounts and you should know that you can only track public accounts. You won’t see any data for private accounts because you already know that private account activities are hidden from the user.
- We haven’t mentioned that Snoopreport isn’t a free service, you’ll have to choose between the options they have. You can choose a package from 4, 26, or even 52 weeks before you can start receiving the activities of any Instagram account. The weeks you bought can be distributed among your added accounts.
- After you bought a plan and have allocated time to the accounts, the monitoring process will begin automatically. Since you’re new to using the service, you should add only one account and buy the cheapest option available to see how things work. Later on, you can learn how to distribute the purchase time within multiple accounts you added.
- You should also note that when the monitoring begins, you can always disable it and you can also remove accounts.
- Once monitoring begins, you’ll be able to start seeing activities of the profile for the username you’ve added. You have the option to choose a time range, you can see the weekly or daily activities and you can set a custom range to view their liked photos, stories or even videos and comments.
- Snoopreport will display every photo liked by the user you’re tracking. This service is dedicated to displaying likes, but you can as well view comments and follows of all public accounts.
- After viewing the report you have the option to export the data displayed for you, you can choose to download in either CSV or PDF format. You also have the option to generate group reports and then download them.
- Snoopreport is a very friendly tool that will help you see what people like on Instagram with ease. As mentioned, if you have another service or tool you find to be effective, you can use it as well. They all work with the same principle, they’re using API to pull data from Instagram and display it for you.
- What’s impressive about Snoopreport is that the account you’re monitoring won’t even know that you’re tracking their account. The only downside is that it’s a paid tool and I believe they deserve to be compensated for this awesome service they’re providing. If you’re to do things manually, you’ll find that you’ll end up spending a lot of time seeing what other people like on Instagram.
We’ve reached the end of this article and we hope you find it helpful, don’t forget to share your thoughts and if you have any trick that allows tracking user activities on Instagram especially the free methods.