Seemingly taking a page from its parent company's playbook, social media photo-sharing app Instagram has announced that it will start abandoning chronological news feeds for it wide user base.
Instead, just like Facebook, the users' news feeds would primarily display posts that are considered most important. According to Instagram, posts from friends that users commonly interact with would be prioritized.
Such a strategy has been adopted by Facebook for years, and recently, even popular microblogging giant Twitter has adopted a similar approach, with an algorithm that allows important, missed tweets to be seen by users when they log in to their accounts.
Though some users were dissatisfied that social media companies are tampering with the posts that they see first, analysts have stated that an algorithmic feed such as the one utilized by Facebook has boosted user engagement, ultimately helping the social media giant expand its user base even more. Currently, Facebook boasts 1.5 billion users and is considered one of the social media sites with the best user engagement statistics.
Instagram currently has about 400 million members, creating a massive influx of uploads every minute. Since the average user of Instagram follows dozens of people, a lot of posts in users' news feeds tend to be left unseen.
Kevin Systrom, co-founder and chief executive of Instagram, stated that a significant amount of the news feed is actually missed by users in the company's current chronological setup. "On average, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their Instagram feed. What this is about is making sure that the 30 percent you see is the best 30 percent possible," he said.
Of course, if the algorithm could work for Instagram, there is a huge chance that the company could, just like Facebook, boost its user engagement. After all, if users are consistently viewing posts that spark their interest, there is a pretty good chance that they would stay in the app for longer periods of time.
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.
