by Josh Constine Instagram has always been a social network where you follow friends and creators, but today it’s evolving with a new way to follow hashtags so you see top posts and Stories about a topic on your home page. Rather than having to dig this content out of search or the Explore tab, you can see the best #Slime videos or #FloralNails tutorials no matter who posts them.

Today’s change will require some smart filtering by Instagram to prevent objectionable content or spam from being distributed by hashtag following. But it has the potential to help users see beyond their own social graphs and dive deeper into niche communities they care about, making Instagram more endless. Eventually, hashtag following could give the app more powerful ad targeting data and an opportunity to show more interstitial ads between Stories, but the company says it’s not doing either right now.  More