Sunday, December 10, 2017

Gurney Art on Instagram

If you do Instagram, please check out my daily feed. It includes pages from my sketchbooks, behind-the-scenes process art, Dinotopia illustrations, and just plain fun.


Here are the top nine posts from 2016.
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6 comments:

Glenn Tait said...

Based on what you posted this year on Instagram were you surprised at your top 9? What are your thoughts on "likes" versus comments.

James Gurney said...

Glenn, good question. I added my best nine from 2016 for comparison. I wonder first off how the algorithm works. Is it a combination of most likes and most comments, and how do you factor in view count on videos? It's really hard for me to guess what kind of reaction any given picture will have. Anyhow, given what the generator chose, I'm kind of glad to see that the most popular posts are wide-ranging: a combination of on-location sketches, Dinotopia art, behind-the-scenes work, didactic stuff, and just plain fun. My only rule is to post my own stuff both old and new work, and I guess the audience is as diverse as the work.

Glenn Tait said...

I've wondered about the algorithm myself. Some people who follow me on Instagram have written that they haven't receive notices about new posts for long periods of time and then when they get one are surprised at how many they have missed. Yet others seem to get them without interruption. Your point on likes and comments might shed some light on that.

James Gurney said...

Glenn, Yes, well, there's Instagram's algorithm, which used to be chronological (meaning you saw everything posted by the people you follow). Now that is optimized by Instagram so that they give you posts they think you're most likely to engage with, and that leads to the effect you describe. There's also the algorithm used by "BestNine" to arrive at the leading posts, and that has to balance various factors of popularity.

Cre said...

Instagram uses a page rank algorithm similar to Facebook. Pinterest uses Hummingbird similar to Google. Instagram and Facebook have the shortest itinerant reach for posts, meaning over the course of an image lifetime on the web, it will lose relevancy at a rate of about 1.8 seconds after it's been shared. Google and Pinterest have the longest lifespan and will rehash images even years after the post was made. Anything blocked by crawler bots (Facebook and Instagram) will lose relevancy at a far faster curve.

James Gurney said...

Cre, Thank you, that's intriguing. I'm not familiar with some of the concepts you mention. Is there a link to a site that explains more about itinerant reach and image relevancy?