June 4, 2018
The photo-sharing powerhouse is set to undergo another algorithm change in the near future, and this time the focus is on users only seeing content that is relevant to them. This comes as a result of Instagram wanting to understand its community better, both where users and brands are concerned.
Instagram have released some insight into how the new system will sort content, and how these changes will benefit users.
In a nutshell, three main factor are taken into account, and these have the most influence:
- Interest: Determining how interested you’re likely to be in content based on what you’ve previously engaged with and uses Instagram’s image recognition tools to consider the specific visual content.
- Timeliness: Simply when the post was published.
- Relationship: Your personal relationship with the post creator based on your previous engagement with them. This includes anything from comments and likes on posts, to direct messages and post tags.
The development and evolution of the image recognition tools suggests that the next algorithm could be more sophisticated in that it takes what’s actually in the images you’re engaging with into consideration. For brands, this means it could be worth extra thought going into what’s in the images you’re posting.
Unfortunately, Instagram have confirmed that the new algorithm won’t see any change to the unpopular non-chronological timeline.
With 800 million active users spending an average of 24 minutes a day on the app, it will be interesting to see whether another algorithm change will have an impact on this. For now, it seems the recent popularity of Instagram means it will continue progressing and evolving, both for brands and for personal use.