Instagram boss explains how its algorithm works including trick to getting content ranked

The CEO of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has started a new series about ranking on the app, lifting the lid on how the platform’s ever-elusive algorithm works.

This could peak the interest of any wannabe influencers trying to get seen by more Instagram users as the boss of the app has shared his insights into what controls you have over your experience.

Posting on his own account, Mosseri said: “I thought I’d start a series of videos explaining not only why we rank content on Instagram, but how we rank content. And I know it’s gonna be a little bit spicy in the comments. I’ll just say that up front.

“But why do we rank content? Well, there are many reasons, but primarily for people who use Instagram to find things, it's about making the most of their time, helping them find content they're the most interested in. And for creators, those who produce content, it’s about increasing the size of the pie so there’s more reach to go around. So we know a bunch of things are true. If we do not rank content, we know that the feed for the consumer gets overrun with content from the accounts that post the most often.”

The Instagram boss went on to reveal that the platform has two general types of algorithms, with one ranking content from accounts you follow and the other used to rank content from accounts that you don’t follow.

Mosseri continued: “What we’re trying to do is make an educated guess about what you’re interested in by looking at what you’ve historically done on the platform, and then predicting how likely you are to like, comment, send to a friend, watch a video, watch it to the end.

“All these different kinds of actions you can perform on a piece of content that are a proxy for you saying you are interested in that content. We use those predictions to come up with relevancy scores for every post you could see, and then we order posts by those scores.

Getting content ranked on Instagram

“Recency matters a lot, which is why they’re roughly in chronological order, but not strictly in chronological order. We know this is an unperfect science, which is why we’re not only iterating and ranking all the time, but we also provide a lot of tools for you to shape your algorithm. You can add to favorites. You can go to a following feed. You can actually see what topics you're interested in and more.”

Closing off the video, the head of the app promised to offer more guidance in future clips.

Naturally, this prompted many social media users to respond in the comment section, with one person saying: “It’s refreshing to see a little bit of transparency from a fairly secretive app in regard to how things work.”

Another wrote: “All I know is I love how the algorithms work because I’m always getting served the content I love to consume.”

And a third added: “Bruh I just want to see what my friends post. That’s why I follow them!”