SOCIAL
Instagram Adds New Listings of ‘Least Interacted With’ and ‘Most Shown in Feed’ in Following Tab
Instagram has rolled out two new category listings within your ‘Following’ tab which will enable you to see which accounts get the most visibility in your feed, and which you rarely engage with.
Want to see which Instagram accounts show up in your feed the most and who you interact with the least? Now you can! Just tap “Following” and manage your list from there. pic.twitter.com/eKFOBCdutr
— Instagram (@instagram) February 6, 2020
The listing of those you don’t engage with essentially recommends people who you should unfollow, while the most present list will give users more control over their algorithm-defined feed. If you don’t like any of the accounts you see, you can remove them, or unfollow them as well.
As with most of Instagram’s new features, the option was first spotted in testing by Jane Manchun Wong last October – though at that stage, the test also included new topic categorization for your following groups.
You can see the categories in the second screenshot, and while Instagram hasn’t included the topic listings in this rollout, it has left room for them in future, with the ‘Categories’ title remaining.
It’s interesting to see social platforms moving more towards follower curation, as opposed to prompting users to follow as many people as possible in order to maximize engagement. Twitter actually experimented with something similar back in 2018, with recommendations of who people should stop following in order to improve their Twitter experience.
Now, with users much more attuned to how social media platforms work, and what they want to see, it makes sense for the platforms to seek more of their input into such, as opposed to pushing connections. Instagram users are actually more attuned to this – as many a social media guru has found, the old ‘follow-for-follow’ just isn’t as effective on Insta, because people have become more selective, and more aware of how the accounts they choose to follow will impact on their experience.
Given this, it’s a good initiative from Instagram, and it’ll no doubt prove beneficial.
In terms of business use, it could help you pinpoint fans who are no longer engaged in your messaging, highlighting content variables that you may want to shift.