In a blog post yesterday (Tuesday, 15th March), Instagram announced they will “soon” be dropping the reverse chronological order currently used in your feed and will instead display the photos in an order decided on by an algorithm.
“The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post,” writes Instagram. “As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
According to Instagram, they are doing this because they estimate that their users miss an average of 70% of their feeds, which is a lot especially if you’re following hundreds or thousands of Instagram users.
Such a strategy has been adopted by Facebook for years, and recently, Twitter adopted a similar approach, with an algorithm that allows important, missed tweets to be seen by users when they log in to their accounts.
Instagram has announced that it will roll out the new algorithm for its news feed with a small sample of real-world users. Eventually, the updated news feed will be set for a widespread roll-out within the next few months.
Are you a fan or the proposed new feed?
Are you happy with the idea of Instagram switching to an algorithmic feed?
— Mercury Web Design (@mercurywebteam) 16 March 2016
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