Over the last week, many images on Instagram Explore Tab (which used to be called the Popular Page) have a minimal number of likes, yet they are getting maximum exposure in this prominent section of the app.
It seems that the app itself has made a decision, yet it hasn’t specifically been announced by the service. You can still hit the popular page if your photo gathers a large number of likes in a short time, still about two thirds of the images are popular, and one third random ‘unpopular’ images.
According to the Instagram help site, some images may show on the Explore Tab/ Popular Page if you follow that particular user. This is not supposed to be a huge issue, since over the last year or so the popular page itself hasn’t been as frequented by users as it previously was. However, popular users can still attract a large audience due to the high numbers of Instagram users.
Instagram is surely a big thing in 2014. Trial, error and keep evaluating is the only key to get the maximum result from it.