Instagram Starts Testing Facebook-Like Algorithm-Driven News Feed

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Today, Instagram announced that it has started testing a more personalized feed for its users. The reorganized feed relies on an algorithm to sort images and videos based on what users are likely to be most interested in.

The social media platform currently organizes posts in chronological order, which often leads to missing posts from friends and family. The news feed more closely resembles that of Instagram’s parent company, Facebook.

Instagram co-founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom said that people miss an average of 70 percent of the posts in their feeds.

The company is using machine-learning technology, as well as other signals of interest, to determine how to sort content. The timeliness of the posts and the relationship between users will also play a role, so that people you interact with more often appear higher in the feed.

The feed experiment reflects the social media platform’s increasing popularity and the resulting surge in content. The company currently has more than 400 million regular users.

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