What does the order of Instagram story views mean? [+2 Myths]

Instagram is more than just a photo and video sharing platform, it's a social network. You don't just post in a vacuum. You engage with other users and interact with them.

If you're like most people, you want to follow who's seen your Instagram story. So you go to your story and click on the viewers'icon. Suddenly, you'll see a list that will probably include several familiar faces.

But how does Instagram's algorithm decide the order of viewers of your story?

The short answer is that it's super-secret. Instagram doesn't tell anyone, and for good reason. If someone knew Instagram's algorithm inside and out, they could create a bot to exploit it.

That said, we do have a general idea of how it works. Here's everything you need to know about Instagram stories viewers.

What are Instagram stories?

Instagram first rolled out the story in 2016, and it's become an incredibly popular feature. The concept is simple: publish content visible only 24 hours for your audience.

Every day, more than 500 million users publish content in Instagram stories. That's a crazy number, and it shows how much people love posting them.

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But there are still more users who watch stories than post them. In other words, any posted story is likely to have multiple viewers.

Since then, Meta has introduced the feature to its other two platforms: Facebook and WhatsApp. Stories are pretty much the same on all three services, with similar features.

Among these features is the ability to see who has viewed your story.

Stories are therefore different from publications, where you can't see who has viewed them. In the case of a photo or video post on your Instagram page, you'll only see if someone has liked, commented or interacted with your content.

When you look at who has viewed your story, the order of accounts is sorted in a certain way. But then what is the view order of Instagram stories?

View date or engagement?

If you're like most people, you probably assume that the list of viewers of your insta story is sorted chronologically.

You'd see the most recent viewer at the top, followed by the second most recent viewer, and so on. At the very bottom of the listing, you'd see the first person to have seen your story.

In fact, this reverse chronological ranking is exactly how it works, at least until you have more than 50 views.

But at this point, you're already looking at a pretty long list that surely includes a bunch of unknowns. If you were trying to find one person in particular, it would be hard to do. Instead, Instagram changes things up once your story gets its 51st view.

At this point, Instagram's algorithm comes into play. Instagram is all about engagement and wants to show you the people you're most interested in. What's more, most people never go beyond the first few followers who have seen their story. To boost engagement, Instagram fills these spots with the people you're most interested in.

How does Instagram know this? It's a trade secret, and they don't say. But it seems to be related to the quantity of interactions between you and the other user. If someone's a stranger and has never interacted with you before, they'll be right at the bottom.

Instagram therefore combines the 2 parameters to adapt the order of its viewer list in your story stats.

Interactions on other social networks

Don't forget that'Instagram isn't a social network in its own right. While it is possible to have just one Instagram account, Instagram strongly encourages its users to sign up for Facebook. Many Instagram users are also on WhatsApp, and all three companies are owned by Meta.

As a result, Instagram has access to your interactions on Facebook and WhatsApp. If you're friends with someone on one of these services, Instagram takes these interactions into account. Maybe you haven't interacted much with that user on Instagram. But if you're constantly commenting on each other's Facebook accounts, they'll appear higher up in your story's viewer list.

Once again, this is done with the intention of boosting engagement and connecting you with real friends. Instagram wants you to see the accounts that interest you the most.

With that in mind, think twice if you don't find someone you interact with a lot. They may not have seen your story because their account has been temporarily or permanently deleted.

Look to see if you can find your last chat with them in your DMs. If their name has been changed to "Instagram user", their account has probably been deleted.

Myths about the order in which Instagram stories are displayed

As we've discussed, views of your story are sometimes sorted in reverse chronological order. But when you have more than 50 views, the order changes.

This, combined with Instagram's secrecy about its algorithm, has led to a number of myths. Here are two of the most common.

The users at the top of the poster'have seen your story several times.

This myth is widespread on the Internet, and it makes intuitive sense. One person views your story, then moves down as other accounts view it.

That user views your ephemeral, top-of-the-list content again. Unfortunately, this is completely false. A person can move up the listing if they've looked at your story a lot. But that's only one measure of engagement.

Accounts at the top of the list harass you

Some people say that when an account watches your content in story but doesn't interact, it gets to the top of the list. This is totally untrue. On the contrary, they would rise higher by liking or sharing, because that's a form of engagement. But again, these are just a few measures of how often you engage.

If you try to see someone else's story and can't find it, it may be that they never accepted your follow request. Or, you may have forgotten to ask to follow her in the first place.

Generally speaking, then, the viewing order of your stories is chronological up to 50 views. Then Instagram shows you the people you're most likely to look for in the list. Viewing frequency and interactions are taken into account, but are not the only elements.

How to use Instagram story view order?

It depends. If you're an individual, the order in which stories are viewed doesn't really matter.

It's mostly a matter of personal interest and finding out who has seen your story. But we don't see why story viewing order would be important to your personal life.

That said, you may be an influencer, or you may be managing an Instagram account for your business.

In these situations, may be very important, but not in the way you might think. In fact, the order in which people saw your story doesn't matter. So there's no point in tracking the first 50 views.

But once you've passed 50 views, things change. Remember what we said about engagement?

Well, the people at the top of your views list will be the ones Instagram thinks are most likely to engage. Basically, you can look at these people's profiles to get a profile of your most engaged followers.

This can thus enable you to better identify their center of interest and create content even more tailored to this audience to engage your community.

Can an Instagram bot help you?

Many people use bots called "auto view story" to view as many stories as possible.

The idea is quite simple. By viewing a bunch of people's stories, you appear in their viewer lists. This can expose you to people who might otherwise never have found your page. But beware, this strategy needs to be set up properly to work.

In fact, as said above, seeing only Instagram stories won't bring you much visibility. Because if you don't, you won't make it into the first few account names in the listing.

Moreover, performing only this type of action en masse can get you in trouble on your Instagram account and cause blocking.

For this strategy to be effective, you also need to automate the other actions on your account (like likes and comments). By doing so, you'll increase your number of interactions with other accounts and move up their viewer listings.

To perform this type of action more easily, you can use Boostfluence. This web application will enable you to manage your Insta account completely autonomously to gain more followers simply.

The same person is always at the bottom of my story viewers list - Why?

We've talked a lot about the people at the top of your story viewers. But what about the people at the bottom?

If the same person always appears at the bottom of the listing, there's a simple explanation. They're following you, but you're not following them. Since you're not following them, Instagram thinks you're unlikely to engage, so they fall to the bottom.

If you're not sure whether you're following this person or not, check your followers and subscriptions lists.

Final thoughts

As you can see, Instagram sorts viewers of your stories in two ways. When you have 50 views or less, they are sorted in reverse chronological order. When you have 51 or more, they will be sorted according to Instagram's secret algorithm. We hope we've given you a good explanation, and helped dispel some myths.