Instagram’s new algorithm that rearranges your feed is now live

Instagram best posts first teaser 002

In mid-March 2016, Facebook-owned Instagram said it would soon tweak its algorithm to surface posts you care about at the top of your feed. Since then, the company has been testing the improved algorithm with a very small subset of its 400 million monthly active users. Starting today, this feature is available to all Instagram users without needing to update the mobile app, the company reported.

“With this new ordering you won’t miss your favorite band’s video after the concert, even if it took place across the world in a different time zone,” said Instagram. “And no matter how many accounts you follow, you should see your best friend’s latest posts.”

Instagram’s own stats show that people on average miss 70 percent of their feeds due to the sheer amount of photographs and videos being shared on the service.

“Over the past few months, we brought this new way of ordering posts to a portion of the community, and we found that people are liking photos more, commenting more and generally engaging with the community in a more active way,” said Instagram.

You may be wondering how the new algorithm actually works.

First of all, it orders posts based on things like how recently the post was shared, your interactions with the person who shared it and the timeliness of the post (whether the algorithm thinks you’ll find the post interesting).

But what about accounts that share several posts in a row that are meant to be seen together, do these posts appear together in the newly personalized feed?

According to Instagram’s help document, even though posts from the same account won’t necessarily appear together in feed they’ll still appear on your profile in the order in which they were posted.

If you haven’t already seen this new experience, you should soon as these things usually take some time to propagate. For those wondering, you can tell that you have the new feed experience if posts are not arranged chronologically.

Source: Instagram via TechCrunch