Instagram: the 3 options that users have to select what to see at the start

Instagram presented a few days ago a new tool for the user can have greater control over what they see in their feed. Thanks to this, it is possible to choose between three different viewing options.

1) Home is the current format of the feed. In this case, you see a combination of the content of people and accounts that the user follows, classified by algorithms, as well as other recommended content that the system thinks you might like.

According to the company, people see more than 90% of their contacts' posts in an algorithmically classified feed. That number was less than half with a chronological organization.

Anyway, those who want to opt for another form of organization, will be able to do so. The Favorites and Following options are then added to Start.

2) Favorites shows the posts of the accounts that the user selects, in chronological order. That is, you can choose the favorite accounts from which you don't want to lose any content. Up to 50 profiles can be added to the list and changes can be made at any time.

Accounts' posts in the favorites list will also be displayed higher up in the home feed, with a star icon.

3) For its part, Following shows only the posts of the people that the user follows and they are also arranged chronologically.

How to choose how content will look in the feed

To opt for one of these three viewing options, you must follow these steps:

1. Open Instagram and log in, if it wasn't done.

2. In the upper left corner click on the Instagram logo

3. A menu with the feed options will be displayed. Choose the desired one.

As this is a global launch announced just a few days ago, it is possible that not all users have this option yet. As a first step, you have to update the app and if the tool hasn't arrived yet, expect that it will surely be available in the next update.

How Instagram algorithms work

Instagram uses a series of algorithms, classifiers, and processes, to personalize the user experience. So when you choose to use the default display option, especially, these systems intervene to give greater relevance in the feed to those contents that the user may find relevant.

What criteria do algorithms take into account to rank the relevance of content? As the company explains on its official blog, the most important things are these aspects:

Information about the publication. These are signals about the popularity of a post (for example, how many people liked it) and about more common information about the content itself, such as the date of posting, the duration (if it is a video) and the location, if any, that was specified.

Data about the person who made the publication. The signals that are taken into account, for example, the times that users interacted with that person in the last few weeks.

The activity of the user. Here, for example, “likes” are taken into account.

The history of interaction with someone. This data is used to evaluate the interest that can be generated by viewing the publications of a particular account. This takes into account the level and type of interaction with the content: whether comments are left, how long do you spend on posts on that profile, etc.

Based on this information, a dozen estimates are made about the likelihood that the user will interact with a publication in different ways.

To organize the feed in start mode, or default, the system takes into account five types of interactions in particular: the likelihood that more time will be spent on the post, that it will be liked, commented on, saved and the profile photo clicked.

In other words, in order for the system to automatically filter the content that may be most interesting to the user, the user simply has to show, in one of the aforementioned ways, his interest. That way, you will see in the feed, as long as it is set to “start” mode, what the algorithms select for the user.

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