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As with any data study, it always helps to read the fine print. This is how they measure engagement rate: "The firm measures engagement with a like follower rat

As with any data study, it always helps to read the fine print. This is how they measure engagement rate: "The firm measures engagement with a like follower ratio or the average number of likes on each Instagram post compared to the number of followers." Thus engagement rate could be decreasing, but that doesn't say anything about the total average engagement of Instagram posts, which might be increasing. Possible reasons engagement rate is decreasing (but overall engagement rising): 1) The people who followed your brand in the early stages are your most enthusiastic fans and most likely to engage with your posts. Followers that hop on the bandwagon are less likely to engage, thus lowering your engagement rate. In effect, over time, your follower count will increase, but new followers will increase the denominator (number of followers) but won't increase the numerator (engagement). 2) Perhaps, there's been a rise in automated followers. Thus, your follower count has been increasing but most of it are bots, thus your engagement rate is decreasing. 3) Perhaps Instagram might be pushing more people to follow brands they don't want to engage with. Whether it's through algorithmic recommendations, or more ads that tell you to follow a brand.

shostack 7y ago
I think #3 is really interesting. As an advertiser with a lot of hands-on experience in ad platforms, FB from the start has tried to make the experience as simplistic as possible to manage. This has the side-effect of also getting less-savvy advertisers to spend lots of money on things that may be less effective for them, but may help FB's bottom line in terms of total advertiser spend and RPM's on their inventory by giving them greater control of where and to whom they fill a given impression in the auction. Depending on how things are working behind the scenes, I could see your third scenario being related to what I've observed. To be fair to them it's a tough Product situation. The majority of their advertisers are not savvy technical marketers who know the ins and outs of Ad Manager, have attribution solutions, etc. So in a sense, they need to overly simplify. But when you oversimplify things, require less technical setup of things like conversion tracking, etc., you tend to move further upstream from revenue-driving activity in the funnel, which can get very wasteful very quickly.
ummonk 7y ago
The longer I am on a platform the more I tend to follow (because I don’t unfollow much) but my engagement remains the same. I imagine most people are the same.
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  Right! There's a diffusion of attention which makes the value of a follower decrease over time. It's just one example, but I tried to measure this once by graphing clicks on tweets by Tim O'Reilly. He's got a nice history since he was early on Twitter and mostly uses Bit.ly so click data is publicly available. What I found was that in 2010 he had about 500k followers and was getting 800 clicks per link on average. But by 2018, he was only getting 400 clicks despite his follower count having grown to 2M. So, from Tim's perspective, the value of a follower dropped by a factor of 8. I think that's interesting even if we don't know exactly why the drop because it highlights the vanity of follower counts. Rather than feeling like his audience grew on Twitter, he should feel like it shrunk in half. It's hard to draw definitive conclusions on why the drop. Was it diffusion? People who worked at Twitter tell me it was a cultural change too where people stopped using Twitter as a feed reader. So maybe that's part of it too. Measurement is hard and conclusions even harder.
  - curryst 7y ago
    I wonder if theres a correlation between the freshness of a follower and their value. I wonder if you're more likely to engage with something shortly after you follow. I've definitely done it myself. I follow because I'm really interested, so I interact with the posts on the new thing, and gradually I get less interested as the content becomes less novel. Just as an example, I got really interested in the CNCF and followed them, but after a time, my interest in updated from them waned. I went from wanting to see everything they were doing, to only caring about major updates to software, to really only caring when something new joins the CNCF.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago
elboru 7y ago
4) Instagram Stories are changing users’ behavior. I don’t have any data to support this claim, but I’ve seen people posting more stories than regular posts, my wife usually closes the app after she’s done watching her latest stories. So, maybe likes are losing importance in instagram?
- adventured 7y ago
  I've had the same experience. Stories seem to have overtaken the normal posts as the more common content. I think it's because users regard stories as acceptable for mundane, kind of boring, every day life content. Whereas singular posts come with greater expectations of quality or exceptionalism.
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    Seems like this should result in more likes on your average post (which should now be above average, since the weaker content has been moved to stories).
    - goldfeld 7y ago
      Or maybe stories and posts are generally useless drivel (posts can't be all above their average.)
      - foldingmoney 7y ago
        My guess is that Instagram users on average probably follow more people than they did one or two years ago but probably give out about the same total number of likes.
- eitally 7y ago
  Dunno about anyone else, but I, for one, only like things from people I actually know, regardless how much I appreciate or enjoy the content posted in an ad, by an influencer, or by a company.
- 7y ago
asdff 7y ago
What drives people to like a commercial instagram post in the first place? If it's my cousin with a fish, of course I'll like the photo. That's me saying, "I saw that fish, good work, keep it up," and my cousin takes my like the same way. If it's a big account, what's the point of being like #14532143, or even upvoting top page reddit/hn posts for that matter? Is it just cathartic or something? I don't get the point.
- zizee 7y ago
  It's possibly the same reason people wear clothing with a large brand-name printed across the back/front. People often associate brands with their "tribe", and liking posts could be another way to signal that they are part of the in-group. Disclaimer: I possibly don't know what I am talking about as I don't really know Instagram mechanics at all, but I am guessing they are similar to Facebook's.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Does Instagram broadcast a notification to your friends / followers when you like something? I don't use it, but I think it'd need something like that for a signaling theory to make sense.
    - KeepFlying 7y ago
      There is no broadcast, but when you are scrolling your feed you will see a selection of friends who have liked each post. Also if you view the activity feed (in a different corner of the app) you can see what your friends have been up to. This is where you will see more explicitly "Sally, Sue, John and Dave liked a post by Mr. Famous" (and similar activity).
      - josteink 7y ago
        > There is no broadcast, Wrong. In your notifications screen (who liked your stuff), you can change pane and instead see what your friends has liked. Most people don’t know it, but yes, it means you can “spy” on your spouse or vica-verce. It’s the sort of creepy most people wanted to avoid when they left Facebook, and unknown to them, Instagram still has it.
henrypray 7y ago
Engagements could also be a zero sum game. People (followers) are most likely following more and more accounts every year, yet could be engaging with the same number of posts. Would be curious to see results of "private engagements" e.g. engagements on stories. Some of the top Twitter accounts I follow continuously tweet about the increase of DMs / private conversations on public posts. This would play into Mark Zuckerberg's vision of transitioning some of social media from the "town square" to the "living room". [1] [1] https://www.facebook.com/FacebookforDevelopers/videos/f8-2019-day-1-keynote/422572928569998/ https://www.facebook.com/FacebookforDevelopers/videos/f8-201...
Jorge1o1 7y ago
To enhance point #1, you don't even need to have churn rates that change over time. Consider a very simple model where the probability of "disengaging" in a given year is 50%, at which point the follower doesn't engage any more with your content (but they don't unfollow you). It doesn't matter what churn rate you pick, you still witness the same effect. And then assume that your follower count grows linearly by 1000 each year. Time 0 1 2 Engage 1000 1500 1750 Follow 1000 2000 3000 Ratio 1 0.750 0.583 In fact, if you have a flat disengagement rate, as long as even a single person disengages without unfollowing, you will see this downward trend in engagement rates. Same assumptions as before, but this time, of the people that churn, 99% unfollow. Time 0 1 2 Engage 1000 1500 1750 Follow 1000 1505 1762.5 Ratio 1 0.997 0.992

shostack 7y ago

I think #3 is really interesting. As an advertiser with a lot of hands-on experience in ad platforms, FB from the start has tried to make the experience as simplistic as possible to manage. This has the side-effect of also getting less-savvy advertisers to spend lots of money on things that may be less effective for them, but may help FB's bottom line in terms of total advertiser spend and RPM's on their inventory by giving them greater control of where and to whom they fill a given impression in the auction. Depending on how things are working behind the scenes, I could see your third scenario being related to what I've observed. To be fair to them it's a tough Product situation. The majority of their advertisers are not savvy technical marketers who know the ins and outs of Ad Manager, have attribution solutions, etc. So in a sense, they need to overly simplify. But when you oversimplify things, require less technical setup of things like conversion tracking, etc., you tend to move further upstream from revenue-driving activity in the funnel, which can get very wasteful very quickly.

ummonk 7y ago

The longer I am on a platform the more I tend to follow (because I don’t unfollow much) but my engagement remains the same. I imagine most people are the same.

tonystubblebine 7y ago
Right! There's a diffusion of attention which makes the value of a follower decrease over time. It's just one example, but I tried to measure this once by graphing clicks on tweets by Tim O'Reilly. He's got a nice history since he was early on Twitter and mostly uses Bit.ly so click data is publicly available. What I found was that in 2010 he had about 500k followers and was getting 800 clicks per link on average. But by 2018, he was only getting 400 clicks despite his follower count having grown to 2M. So, from Tim's perspective, the value of a follower dropped by a factor of 8. I think that's interesting even if we don't know exactly why the drop because it highlights the vanity of follower counts. Rather than feeling like his audience grew on Twitter, he should feel like it shrunk in half. It's hard to draw definitive conclusions on why the drop. Was it diffusion? People who worked at Twitter tell me it was a cultural change too where people stopped using Twitter as a feed reader. So maybe that's part of it too. Measurement is hard and conclusions even harder.
- curryst 7y ago
  I wonder if theres a correlation between the freshness of a follower and their value. I wonder if you're more likely to engage with something shortly after you follow. I've definitely done it myself. I follow because I'm really interested, so I interact with the posts on the new thing, and gradually I get less interested as the content becomes less novel. Just as an example, I got really interested in the CNCF and followed them, but after a time, my interest in updated from them waned. I went from wanting to see everything they were doing, to only caring about major updates to software, to really only caring when something new joins the CNCF.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago

elboru 7y ago

4) Instagram Stories are changing users’ behavior. I don’t have any data to support this claim, but I’ve seen people posting more stories than regular posts, my wife usually closes the app after she’s done watching her latest stories. So, maybe likes are losing importance in instagram?

adventured 7y ago
I've had the same experience. Stories seem to have overtaken the normal posts as the more common content. I think it's because users regard stories as acceptable for mundane, kind of boring, every day life content. Whereas singular posts come with greater expectations of quality or exceptionalism.
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  Seems like this should result in more likes on your average post (which should now be above average, since the weaker content has been moved to stories).
  - goldfeld 7y ago
    Or maybe stories and posts are generally useless drivel (posts can't be all above their average.)
    - foldingmoney 7y ago
      My guess is that Instagram users on average probably follow more people than they did one or two years ago but probably give out about the same total number of likes.
eitally 7y ago
Dunno about anyone else, but I, for one, only like things from people I actually know, regardless how much I appreciate or enjoy the content posted in an ad, by an influencer, or by a company.
7y ago

asdff 7y ago

What drives people to like a commercial instagram post in the first place? If it's my cousin with a fish, of course I'll like the photo. That's me saying, "I saw that fish, good work, keep it up," and my cousin takes my like the same way. If it's a big account, what's the point of being like #14532143, or even upvoting top page reddit/hn posts for that matter? Is it just cathartic or something? I don't get the point.

zizee 7y ago
It's possibly the same reason people wear clothing with a large brand-name printed across the back/front. People often associate brands with their "tribe", and liking posts could be another way to signal that they are part of the in-group. Disclaimer: I possibly don't know what I am talking about as I don't really know Instagram mechanics at all, but I am guessing they are similar to Facebook's.
- meowface 7y ago
  Does Instagram broadcast a notification to your friends / followers when you like something? I don't use it, but I think it'd need something like that for a signaling theory to make sense.
  - KeepFlying 7y ago
    There is no broadcast, but when you are scrolling your feed you will see a selection of friends who have liked each post. Also if you view the activity feed (in a different corner of the app) you can see what your friends have been up to. This is where you will see more explicitly "Sally, Sue, John and Dave liked a post by Mr. Famous" (and similar activity).
    - josteink 7y ago
      > There is no broadcast, Wrong. In your notifications screen (who liked your stuff), you can change pane and instead see what your friends has liked. Most people don’t know it, but yes, it means you can “spy” on your spouse or vica-verce. It’s the sort of creepy most people wanted to avoid when they left Facebook, and unknown to them, Instagram still has it.

henrypray 7y ago

Engagements could also be a zero sum game. People (followers) are most likely following more and more accounts every year, yet could be engaging with the same number of posts. Would be curious to see results of "private engagements" e.g. engagements on stories. Some of the top Twitter accounts I follow continuously tweet about the increase of DMs / private conversations on public posts. This would play into Mark Zuckerberg's vision of transitioning some of social media from the "town square" to the "living room". [1] [1] https://www.facebook.com/FacebookforDevelopers/videos/f8-2019-day-1-keynote/422572928569998/ https://www.facebook.com/FacebookforDevelopers/videos/f8-201...

Jorge1o1 7y ago

To enhance point #1, you don't even need to have churn rates that change over time. Consider a very simple model where the probability of "disengaging" in a given year is 50%, at which point the follower doesn't engage any more with your content (but they don't unfollow you). It doesn't matter what churn rate you pick, you still witness the same effect. And then assume that your follower count grows linearly by 1000 each year. Time 0 1 2 Engage 1000 1500 1750 Follow 1000 2000 3000 Ratio 1 0.750 0.583 In fact, if you have a flat disengagement rate, as long as even a single person disengages without unfollowing, you will see this downward trend in engagement rates. Same assumptions as before, but this time, of the people that churn, 99% unfollow. Time 0 1 2 Engage 1000 1500 1750 Follow 1000 1505 1762.5 Ratio 1 0.997 0.992