Instagram Briefly Introduced a Huge Change & Everyone Freaked Out

Instagram looked a lot different on Thursday morning, and it unfortunately wasn't because chronological timelines had made their return. Instead, the company introduced a horizontal feed for some users. 

Rather than scrolling down to see new posts, users had to scroll sideways (similar to Tinder and other swipe-based apps). The new design — which only affected the main feed, not individual profiles — appeared to resemble one long Instagram story.

But as it turns out, the change wasn't even supposed to happen. "Due to a bug, some users saw a change to the way their feed appears today," Instagram's company page tweeted. "We quickly fixed the issue and feed is back to normal. We apologize for any confusion."

Within minutes, Instagram reverted users back to the vertical feed.

Adam Mosseri, Instagram's VP of Product, also addressed the unexpected update. "Sorry about that," he tweeted. "This was supposed to be a very small test but we went broader than we anticipated."

Mosseri didn't clarify whether the change would be implemented in the future. He did, however, respond to a tweet that said "So is this coming to all or still just 'testing'?' with "Just a test."

According to The Verge, Instagram actually began testing the feature back in October in the Explore section of the app.