How Instagram Works

Instagram recently published a lengthy blog post, the beginning of a series aimed at explaining how the platform works. I wanted to hit the highlights for you, because well we’re all time poor aren’t we?

Recap engage:

• The "Algorithm is actually several algorithms. "Each part of the app – Feed, Explore, Reels – uses its own algorithm tailored to how people use it."

• How Feed and Stories are ranked:

  • "...all the recent posts shared by the people you follow."

  • "we take all the information we have about what was posted, the people who made those posts, and your preferences." - called signals and "rank them in the following order:

    • Information about the post- how popular a post is, think how many people have liked it, the content itself, when it was posted, how long it is if it’s a video, and what location, if any, was attached to it.

    • Information about the person who posted - how interesting the person might be to you, and how many times people have interacted with that person in the past few weeks.

    • Your activity.

    • Your history of interacting with someone. IE. whether or not you comment on each other’s posts."

  • Instagram makes a prediction. "These are educated guesses at how likely you are to interact with a post in different ways. ...the five interactions we look at most closely are:

    • how likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post

    • comment on it

    • like it

    • save it

    • tap on the profile photo. "

• How Reels are Ranked

  • "Reels is designed to entertain you."

  • "The most important predictions we make are how likely you are to watch a reel all the way through, like it, say it was entertaining or funny, and go to the audio page (a proxy for whether or not you might be inspired to make your own reel.)"

  • The following signals, in "order of importance:

    • Your activity - reels you’ve liked, commented on, and engaged with recently.

    • Your history of interacting with the person who posted.

    • Information about the reel - audio track, pixels and whole frames, as well as popularity.

    • Information about the person who posted.

• Updates to the Algorithm

  • “Stories that were “reshared” from Feed: until recently, we valued these Stories less, because we’ve heard consistently that people are more interested in seeing original Stories. But we see a swell of reshared posts in big moments – everything from the World Cup to social unrest – and in these moments people were expecting their Stories to reach more people than they did, so we stopped.”

  • "Pick your Close Friends. You can select your close friends for Stories. This was designed as a way to let you share with just the people closest to you, but we will also prioritize these friends in both Feed and Stories."

• "Shadowbanning"

  • "We also hear that people consider their posts getting fewer likes or comments as a form of “shadowbanning”. We can’t promise you that you’ll consistently reach the same amount of people when you post. The truth is most of your followers won’t see what you share, because most look at less than half of their Feed."

SOURCE
Instagram. “Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works.” Instagram.com, Instagram, 8 June 2021, about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/shedding-more-light-on-how-instagram-works. Accessed 10 June 2021.