Instagram is a great social space. You can follow your favorite celebrities, friends, and family to get new updates through their pictures and videos. People who are interested to know you can follow you too. It feels exhilarating when someone follows you. However, have you ever noticed your Instagram following list order? Is it arranged alphabetically, latest to oldest, most interactive to least interactive? In this article, let me tell you how Instagram arranges your following list.
Following someone on Instagram means you don’t have to open their profile every time you want to view their posts. As soon as they upload something, it will appear on your home page. While there are ways you can view someone’s profile without having an account. It is better to create an account and follow the people. That way, you won’t have to sneak around their profiles.
Your following list can tell a lot about you. The kind of content you like, the people you follow, and so much more is visible through it. You might go through your following list and see that while your bestfriend is somewhere at the end, the person you have least interacted with is at the top. This gets confusing.
Doesn’t Instagram have a way to sort the Instagram following list order? Scroll down to check how your following list is arranged on Instagram.
In This Article
Instagram Following List Order of Your Account
Your Instagram following list shows the people you follow. They can be your friends, family, celebrities, influencers, or even some random stranger. While earlier, Instagram arranged the following list randomly, now there are three different ways you can set your Instagram following list order.
These are the three orders you can select for your Instagram following list:
1. Default: Setting your following list on default will show you the people you have most interacted with or recently interacted with on the top. However, that is not the case always. There can be times when the default mode sets the Instagram following list order randomly.
2. Latest: Setting your Instagram following list order to Latest shows you the people you have recently followed on the top. As you scroll down you can see the profiles you followed from the latest to the oldest.
3. Earliest: Setting your Instagram following list order to Earliest shows you the first person you followed through Instagram on top. I find this setting nostalgic. Looking at who you followed when you first created this account can bring back many memories. This setting shows you the order in which you followed different users on Instagram.
How to Apply Different Settings to Your Instagram Following List Order?
When you open your Instagram following list, it is set at the default mode. If you want to change the mode from default to latest or earliest, you can follow these steps:
1. Open your Instagram.
2. Go to your Profile page.
3. Click on the Following list.
4. You will see ‘Sorted by Default’ written on the top.
5. Click on the arrow symbol on the right hand side.
6. A pop-up will appear giving you three options:
- Default
- Date followed: Latest
- Date followed: Earliest
7. Select the setting of your choice.
Voila! You are done! Now, you can see your following list ordered as default, latest, or earliest.
Instagram Following List Order of Other’s Account
In today’s time, what do you do when your loved one is acting suspicious? You check their Instagram following list to find the new people they have started following. Well, that is not going to work. How you view someone’s Instagram following list order used to be totally random. Instagram kept switching between chronological view and alphabetical view.
However, now, the Instagram following list order of other’s account is not completely random. If you check the following list of different profiles, you can find a pattern. Here is the pattern you will find when you check someone’s Instagram following list.
First Category: The first category that appears on someone’s following list are the accounts you follow. These are the accounts that are common between you and the user whose following list you are checking. This means you both follow these profiles.
Second Category: The second category that appears on someone’s following list is the people who follow you but you don’t follow them back. These accounts are followed by the user whose following list you are checking.
Third category: The third category that appears on someone’s following list is the people with whom you have the most mutual followers.
Fourth Category: The fourth category contains the last people on the list. These are the users that you will most likely follow.
To conclude, Instagram aligns the other users’ following list order in accordance to you. It does not show you who that person followed recently. So, the Instagram following list order of another user also depends on you.
Instagram Following List Order Algorithm
The Instagram following list order is determined by a lot of things. While it starts with the mutual followers, it then distributes into less common factors. Here are some of the factors that help set the Instagram following list order.
1. People You Follow
The first few people you see on other users’ following lists are your mutual friends. These are the common people that you and the other user follow. You can see the following button in front of these profiles. These profiles come on the top of the list because Instagram believes that you would be interested in looking at your known common profiles.
2. Interaction
The next factor that affects an account’s position on someone’s following list is your interaction with them. I have told you earlier, that when you check someone’s following list, it is set in accordance with you. So whether you interact with someone or not can affect their position in the following list. Here interaction does not only means messaging each other. It also depicts if you regularly like each other’s posts and comment on them.
3. Mutual Followers
Let me first tell you what mutual followers mean in this context. A mutual follower would be a person that follows you and the account you are stalking. It does not matter if you follow them back or not. If you and the person who’s following the list you are stalking have the same followers, they will be at the top of the following list.
4. People Who Followed You Recently
The next thing that affects someone’s Instagram following list algorithm is the people who followed you recently. Following someone is a form of interaction. Since this account started following you recently, Instagram assumes that you would be interested in their profile. That is why people who followed you recently are placed towards the top or middle of the following list.
5. Stalkers
There is a presumption that people who follow you are on the top of someone’s following list. However, that’s not the case. No matter how many times a person stalks you, they won’t come on the top of the following list unless they have interacted with your account. If they like your pictures and message you only then can they be on the top of the list.
6. Geo-Location
Another factor that affects someone’s Instagram following list algorithm is geo-location. On someone else’s following list you will see the people who live near you at the top. For eg, if you live in the US and you are stalking the following list of someone who lives in the UK. If that person follows someone from the US, then that person is most likely to appear at the top.
7. Verified Accounts
The last factor that affects someone’s following list is verified accounts. For some reason, Instagram puts the verified accounts and brand accounts towards the end of the following reason. There is no explanation given for this. If you check someone’s Instagram following list order, you will see that the verified accounts come at the end of the list.
Wrapping Up
It is time to wrap up! In this article, I have told you how the Instagram following list is ordered. If up until now you thought that the following list is randomly set, you were wrong. The following list is affected by a number of factors. It depends on if you are checking your own following list or stalking someone else’s list. In both the scenarios the following list is ordered based on different patterns.
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