Here’s how Instagram decides which post photo, video or story you see first

In today’s world where people are more inclined towards making Instagram Reels and uploading stories on the platform, it can definitely be assumed that the Facebook-owned platform is one of the most widely used apps across the world. People love sharing photos, videos, etc. on the app. 

However, have you ever thought about how people get to see the first post and whose posts they get to see it?

To make your head clear, Instagram has finally come up with an answer in its recently published blog post.

"Today, we’re sharing the first in a series of posts that will shed more light on how Instagram’s technology works and how it impacts the experiences that people have across the app. This first post tries to answer questions like "How does Instagram decide what shows up for me first?”; “Why do some of my posts get more views than others?"; and "How does Instagram decide what to show me in Explore?", the app said in its blog post.

How does Instagram rank Feed, Stories, Explore and Reels?

Feed and Stories are such features of the platform where people want to see the content in terms of photos and videos posted by the near and dear ones. On the other hand, Explore was made particularly to discover new things which basically comes from the Insta accounts that you follow.

Meanwhile, Reels are quite similar to Explore which is basically designed to entertain and show content from accounts you don’t follow. 

Here is how Instagram ranks Feeds, Stories, Explore and Reels:

1. Recently shared: Whatever people recently share in terms of photos or videos from the ones they follow, barring few ads. 

2. Signals: Next is the information on the app that was posted and the people who made those posts and preferences. Instagram calls these “Signals” as it includes everything from what time a post was shared to whether you’re using a phone or the web to how often you like videos. The most important signals are:

a. Information about the post: These are signals both about how popular a post is – think how many people have liked it – and other details such as when it was posted, how long it is if it’s a video, and what location, if any, was attached to it.

b. Information about the person who posted. 

c. Your activity: This is basically about knowing your interest and signals such as how many posts you’ve liked.

d. Your history of interacting with someone: This is basically how interested you are in looking at some post.

But there are exceptions too as in a few cases where Instagram tries not to show many posts from the same person in a row and if a post is against Community Guidelines, then it gets instantly taken down. 

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