Instagram Tests Favorite People Feature

Instagram is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to mark people as “Favorite”.

Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram is testing a new feature that allows users to mark other users as “Favorite”. According to the news in The Verge, the new feature will allow users to categorize the most important Instagram accounts as their priority. In this way, the posts of the users selected as favorites will be more prominent in the user’s flow.

Mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi first shared the update on the new feature on his Twitter account. The new feature is similar to a different “Favorites” feature from Instagram in 2017 that allowed users to limit the target audience for each post. Thanks to the favorite people feature, users will be able to share any photo only with their designated favorites. However, the new feature also aims to give Instagram more control over the flow of users by specifying the most important accounts for the user.

Instagram currently ranks the feed by the most recently shared posts from people followed, according to a blog post the company published in June 2021 on its algorithm. In addition, other criteria, such as how interested users may be in a post, also affect the ranking. Instagram’s personal feed page is also shaped by user likes.

Finally, it should be noted that it is not clear whether the aforementioned Favorites feature will become an official feature or will change before it spreads to a wider usage area.