Today, Instagram announced a small but really important tweak for their platform: photos will no longer be sorted in purely chronological order.
First found in Facebook, they will now adopt the algorithm in showing your the pictures and will display what’s most relevant to you, instead of simply showing you what’s the most recent. They stated:
The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content…
They added: “your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.”
Instagram stated that the change is because of a surprising study in their stats: the average user misses 70 percent of feeds. If the company is just using the old chronological order, that means people are missing out on potentially interesting photos because it takes too long to scroll down to them.
The app will now prioritize the people you’re closest with or the influencers that you most care about. But don’t worry, your photo will still be in their feed, just at the bottom part.
Instagram is currently testing the new feed to selected users but you can expect that it will roll out to everyone in the coming months.
