The number one of Instagram has shared important information about the new – but “old” – feed of the photo social
Not all novelties are well received, and this is precisely the case of Instagram’s feed that for a few years has abandoned the chronological order of posts to entrust everything to an algorithm, to what can be improperly called “artificial intelligence”. The nostalgic, however, should be satisfied soon.
To describe how it will be the “new” Instagram feed was Adam Mosseri, that is the number one of the social platform, who answered through his personal account to users’ questions on the subject. The quotation marks are due to the fact that the novelty of Instagram expected by many is actually a return to the past, to the old feed of posts, precisely. At the beginning of its adventure in fact, Instagram submitted to its users a chronological list of publications of the accounts followed, while some time later the platform has actually forced everyone to submit to the will of the algorithm.
The Instagram feed “of discord”
Currently, with an upward swipe on the main screen of the social you do not see the posts published in chronological order, but the management is entrusted to the algorithm developed by Instagram, which analyzes the behavior of the individual user and then processes the sequence of posts to be shown on the basis of what has been learned in terms of preferences and interests of each user. In other words, it is the algorithm that chooses the posts that should be more interesting according to the calculations.
At the time of the introduction of this novelty many (not to say many) were not euphemistically enthusiastic about the change, and several have continued to call for a return to the previous system over the years, that of the chronological order.
The new, old, Instagram feed
After standing firm for years in its position, now Instagram seems intent on giving each user at least the freedom to choose the sorting that is preferred, the one that hands the algorithm – namely the current one – the “keys” of the posts or the one adopted originally that sorts the stream based on date and time of publication.
Mosseri explained that currently Instagram is testing two ways for the return to chronological order. One will allow everyone to choose favorites among the accounts followed and show their content always on top of all others, from the most recent to the “oldest”, the other in testing is the classic chronological in which all publications of all accounts followed are ordered in the feed as it was in the past.
The number one of Instagram, which has just recorded a record number of users in the world, added: “We are working on a version of the chronological feed that we hope to launch next year,” adding that the Meta-controlled company has been working on the novelty for months and that there is the intention to provide users with the decision-making power in the first quarter of 2022, so between January and March.