The most rapidly expanding social media software in these days is Instagram. Though younger than YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, Instagram is gaining much popularity. The people operating Instagram, much like the brains behind any successful setup, are trying their best to make it more and more better and improve the user experience.
Lately, the photos in the news feed were shown in chronological order but now they have developed an algorithm that shows the photos based on the possibility of a user being interested in them. It is decided by the relationship of you and the person posting the photo and the timeliness of the post in relation to current trends at any provided time.
Here is an overview of the working of Instagram Algorithm as figured out by a team of researchers from MIT after the recent upgrade. The exact details and working mechanism of the algorithm is definitely not made public. The photos are displayed to the users in the news feed depending on
- The Person Posting them
Your interaction with other users is recorded and then it is used to determine whether or not you will be interested in seeing the photos added by a specific user.
- The time of the post in reference to the trending hashtag
The photos which are uploaded with a hashtag which is trending in the time of their upload have a greater tendency of showing up before the other ones.
- The level of interest you have shown
The artificial intelligence records your inclination towards various topics and then uses it to figure out which topics or hashtags may or may not interest you.
- Your location
Instagram also uses you location. For example if you have followed cars and food, it will show you the cars in your vicinity and the images related to food uploaded by users near you.
The Wonderful World of Algorithms 