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| Instagram is testing a Favorites feature to organize your feed |
Instagram is testing a feed optimization solution called "Favorites". According to Alessandro Palozzi, a mobile developer who first published new features on Twitter, Favorites allows you to prioritize the platform's most important accounts so that their posts appear at the top of your feed.
If this feature sounds familiar, it's because the platform tested another favorite feature in 2017 that lets you specify the exact audience for each post.
For example, instead of sharing photos with all of your followers, you can just share photos of your wedding with some of your favorite photos.
However, my favorite feature of the 2021 version is letting the platform know which accounts are most important to you so you have more control over your feeds.
You can follow a number of different brands and content creators through your account. But you don't necessarily prioritize that content, which is just as important as the content of your friends and family.
In a statement on how feeds and stories are ranked in June, platform president Adam Mosseri said the company is considering several factors.
It takes into account the latest posts of people you follow first. It then looks at things like popularity and participation in order of importance. How many times have you interacted with the person who posted the content in the past few weeks? How many posts have you liked on the platform? Along with your interaction history with someone etc.
The platform then predicts your probability of spending a few seconds on the post, commenting on it, liking it, saving it or clicking on the account picture.
Mosseri said that the more likely you are to take an action, and the higher the rating of that action, the more posts you see.
Instagram is testing a Favorites feature to organize your feed
While you enjoy most of the posts you see, this may not be what you're looking for. However, you can send a platform error signal indicating what you want to see in the feed.
It's unclear if this favorite feature will ever become an official feature. Or it could change before a large-scale rollout.
At the same time, you can see this feature in your account list right below your close friends. This feature gives you control over who you want to share your story with.