How Instagram Uses AI and Big Data Technology?

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, Instagram, a photo-sharing app, has amassed over a billion users. What was once a commonplace mobile application called Burbn has now risen proudly to achieve global fame. Indeed, I’m referring to Instagram.

Instagram, a photo and video sharing social network platform, has made strides towards becoming one of the most renowned and well-known apps on a global scale, and it will surpass a billion monthly active users in 2020.

Since its launch in 2010, the app has grown quickly, overwhelming its rivals. By continuously adding new features and engaging in self-improvement, the app has paved the way to become the fifth most downloaded app by the end of 2020. 

Instagram has introduced Instagram Reels as an alternative to the video-sharing app TikTok following its ban in India. The app has currently sparked a significant amount of excitement among today’s young, especially the growing population of individuals who prefer to express their ideas through photos. Big data analytics come into play here since the platform receives millions of posts each day and because users interact with these posts frequently by like, commenting, and using hashtags.

How Instagram Uses Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

• Explore Page and Search Function

Users can search images and posts about specific subjects or activities, events, as well as for exploring experiences, popular restaurants, and locations across the world, with the use of tags and trending information. In essence, Instagram uses a machine learning method called “word embedding” to identify accounts that are somewhat similar to one another. This method analyses the text’s word order to determine how closely related the words are. The same method is used by Instagram to determine and understand the relationship between any two accounts. Therefore, the Explore system observes the “seed accounts”—i.e., the accounts that users have previously interacted with by liking or saving their content—in order to make its recommendations. Then, 500 pieces of content are chosen from the accounts that are similar to these.

• Instagram Bots

These bots are made to streamline user interactions with their accounts. These carry out a variety of tasks, such as liking customer comments on posts and posting comments on other people’s content. This is seen to be a fantastic strategy for raising engagement. Kenji.AI is a prime example of an Instagram bot. This is a brand-new Instagram bot that effectively automates user behaviour. Machine learning algorithms are used to determine which users are most likely to interact with the user’s account.

• Target Advertising

By obtaining and analysing the customer insights it learns from its huge data, Instagram makes sure that it uses it to its greatest potential. By comprehending and analysing the search preferences and engagement insights of its users, the platform sells advertising space to businesses that happen to be interested in reaching a certain target population and in putting out a specific marketing message. Because Facebook owns Instagram, the social media platform has access to a vast network of insights and data that can be used to target advertising based on user preferences, engagement with other users’ content, and saved posts.

• Designing Personalized Feed

It is increasingly important for the platform to serve material that is relevant to its consumers as the volume of content published on the app grows quickly. Instagram changed its feed in 2016 to display posts in the order it thinks users would like and share them rather than in reverse chronological order. In order to create a customised feed for each user, a machine learning algorithm was used to thoroughly analyse all the material and determine which of it would be more relevant for the consumers.

• Dealing with Spam

There is a lot of stuff published on the app every day, so some of it is going to be spam. Instagram uses the text analytics algorithm “DeepText” from artificial intelligence to filter out spam messages. Its spam filter is capable of identifying spam in more than 9 languages, including English, Arabic, and Chinese. These messages are automatically deleted after being found. The algorithm can understand the context of a communication almost as well as people.

• Dealing with Cyberbullying

Instagram is one of many social media platforms that individuals, especially teens, have used for a long time to engage in cyberbullying. By utilising artificial intelligence capabilities, the platform has committed to combat online abuse by anticipating and identifying any bullying or objectionable content on the network. The platform has recently introduced a new AI feature to address this issue. 

Final Thoughts

The topic of what is making Instagram so successful arises in light of its growing acceptance and popularity. Its strategic use of data has a lot to do with its development and popular acceptance. Instagram is one of the well-known corporations that utilises AI and Big Data, and its results attest to the influence these cutting-edge technologies have.