Instagram Launches New Tools to Help Refine Content Recommendations
The success of Tiktok has opened doors for many opportunities for content creators worldwide. One reason for the platform’s rise to popularity was its AI algorithm that constantly learns its user’s tastes and preferences and feeds them accordingly.
Instagram saw success with its reels feature and the AI recommendation mechanism. This was highly successful as more users engaged with this feature.
Instagram wasn’t finished there. Several new features have been released that will increase user engagement and extensively refine the recommendations you receive when you scroll through the app. The first feature is the ability to select multiple posts you are not interested in. This would greatly assist Instagram’s AI in determining your preferences and ensure you don’t get junk on your feed.
This feature can be found on the Explore tab of the app. This feature is still in its testing phase, so you might still get a few posts that you are not interested in, even after letting the AI know you were uninterested in similar posts. Interacting with this feature more might give you a better response, and Instagram would have more data to refine your feed.
The next feature is also in its testing phase and will be around filtering out content with keywords, phrases and emojis in post captions that users do not associate themselves with. Similarly, the new self-reporting feature will work in tandem with the previously mentioned filtering feature. This is the work towards a more user-friendly platform and only have you see the content you enjoy while also filtering content you are not interested in.
Instagram’s AI will still need your input to make data-driven recommendations and is not at a stage where it can pick up on your tastes and preferences organically, like TikTok. Apart from these new additions, the platform has been very transparent about how its new AI recommendation mechanism will operate but provides you with an overview of its machine learning. Instagram has stated that five interactive metrics will determine how you will be suggested content.
The first metric is the time spent on individual posts. The second is how likely a user would like a post. The third is the likeliness a user would like a post. The fourth is how likely a user would reshare a post, and the final metric is the likeliness a user would visit a content creator’s profile.
What has been noticed is that Instagram is now prioritizing posts that are reshared more. This was an effort to spotlight more creators on the platform. For example, if you are looking to optimize your social media content on Instagram, it might be worth looking into how users interact with your post in terms of these specific metrics the AI picks up on. You can make it easier for you by focusing on visually appealing designs that will grasp the attention of users alike and have them spend more time viewing your post. This would be an excellent way to boost user engagement with your content and have you pop up more on people’s feeds.
One critical observation that has been noted is that the Save metric on posts has not been mentioned in the new overview process. But nevertheless, these new insights and features are ready to change how people view content on Instagram, and it might even elevate itself to having an AI that machine learns just as efficiently as Tiktok.
