Hi everyone. Shawn again, and I'm here to present some news that interests me on more than a few levels. As a computer scientist with a special interest in the technology that makes sites like Facebook and Google tick, I've been watching the discussion about the major changes to Instagram. For those not in the know, Instagram is changing the way the news feed is sorted. Previously, your Instagram feed was reverse chronological ordering, with the most recent posts showing up at the top. The new ordering is going to use a mix of machine learning and magic (okay, mostly machine learning) to tailor your feed to how it thinks you would appreciate the content. Some people are scared this means the death of small businesses, enough to form an online petition to request a reversal of the decision. As a co-owner of a small business, I understand how there can be a strong fear of these changes that might make an already difficult job even harder. This is actually going to have an effect on getting content published, which is one of the hardest things as a small business. And it's scary enough trusting another company, let alone some mysterious algorithm. I'm here to tell you that everything is probably going to be okay, whether you are a purveyor of images or a casual Instagram user. Engagement and Instagram The excellent Instagram post scheduling site Latergramme has a blog post discussing the changes. It's worth a read, regardless...

About three weeks ago I decided to step up my Instagram game. I wanted to post more and earn new followers organically. I started posting whenever I thought about it, usually at lunch time or just after dinner. Eventually, I decided I needed to determine the best time of day to post so I could maximize the return on each post. [I want to preface that my following is relatively small, so the numbers that I receive are not astronomical at all, but still large enough for the data to be accurate.] My first post on my Instagram plan was just before noon (specifically at 11:45 am). Within the first hour I had received about 15 likes on the photo. I was pretty proud of that number, so that night I decided to post at 8:00 in the evening. My thought process for that time was people would be home, finished cleaning up from dinner, and ready to scroll through Instagram. Sounds plausible, but my post at this time only got 5 likes. Frustrated, I started looking at articles on Instagram post timing and found a Huffington Post article that really matched exactly what I was looking for. The best part about the article was that the research was done using Latergramme, which is an amazing scheduling service that I now use regularly. However, I wasn't sure if their analysis of times would be accurate for me and my readers. I wanted to find my best times to post...