despite recent reports of users experiencing a chronological instagram feed it seems the social media outlet will not be restoring things back to the way they once were. so what better way to get to grips with the sad news then to understand how it works now and why it could potentially be better.

 

since july 2016, instagram replaced its reverse-chronological feed with an algorithm based science that has captivated and confused everyone. according to instagram before the change two years ago users were apparently missing 70 percent of all posts and 50 percent of their friends’ posts. now reports reveal the three main factors determining the current order of your feed:

 

  1. interest: instagram analyses your behaviour, using machine vision analayzig, to determine what it thinks you will care about the most.
  2. recency: it looks at when the post was shared, and prioritizes recent posts.
  3. relationship: finally, it determines how close you are to the person who shared it, depending on your interaction with that person including likes, comments and tagged photos with that particular user.

 

as well as this there are three additional factors influencing rankings:

 

frequency: this looks at how many times you open instagram, calculating the best posts to show you since your last visit.
following: the algorithm of the feed is dependent on the amount of people it is picking content from, the more you follow the less likely you will see of everyone.
usage: how long you spend on instagram will determine if you are seeing the best photos in short sessions or digging deeper into its catalog if you spend more total time browsing.

 

the facebook-owned social channel revealed all during a whiteboard session with reporters.