Instagram ditched the reverse chronological feed for an algorithm in July 2016 and today the company has showcased a new feed ranking algorithm. The company will use machine learning to create a unique feed for everyone. Since it is focused on machine learning, even if you follow exact same accounts as someone else, your feed will be unique and depend on how you interact with those accounts.
Instagram details Interest, Recency, Relationship as three main factors that determine what you see on your Instagram feed. Instagram Interest factor predicts what you’ll care about a post, it determines by past behavior on similar content and potentially analyzing the actual content of the post. The algorithm determines how recently the post was shared.
It also uses how close you are to the person who shared it, with the higher ranking for people you’ve interacted with a lot in the past on Instagram such as commenting, liking and more. Beyond these three core factors, frequency, following, usage are other important factors. Frequency determines how often you open Instagram and if you follow a lot of people. Finally, Usage determines how long you spend on Instagram determines if you’re just seeing the best posts during short sessions.
Instagram also clarified that it is not considering an option to see the old reverse chronological feed, it won’t hide any posts in the feed and the feed format does not favor the photo or video format universally, but will only focus on what type of content people are engaging with.