Instagram has arranged followers in the past according to how long you have been friends with that individual. This means that the people that most recently followed you sat at the top of the list. As you scroll further down, you saw your older friends. However, Instagram has removed this feature, and as of June 2021, Instagram rolled out a different algorithm, that features your followers in a randomized pattern.
This means that if you look at your follower list on your phone, and then you go and look at your follower list on your desktop, you are going to see your followers in a different order. In this article, we're going to talk about how to see recent followers on Instagram, so that you can solve this problem, and work out who has recently followed you, and who might have followed someone recently.
How to See Who Recently Followed Someone on Instagram
Once Instagram updated its algorithm, this meant that you could no longer view followers listed in chronological order. You also couldn't see somebody's recent followers on Instagram. Below, we are going to discuss a couple of techniques that you can apply to help you track recent followers. The first involves checking on new followers through your mobile, and the second is going to be the web version. For mobile visit somebody's Instagram profile, and select their followers list. You are going to be able to see their followers in chronological order, but you might have to refresh the list a few times before getting the list that has been organized in chronological order. There are no guarantees that this is going to help you see recent followers but it's definitely your best shot at trying to figure it out.
You can do this for the web version of Instagram as well.
1. Go to your favorite web browser, and open the Instagram website.
2. Enter the name of the Instagram username that you want to check.
3. Choose profile, and go to their profile.
4. Select their followers tab.
5. You should see recent friends at the top.
Because of the changes of the Instagram algorithm, there is no way to know the order of followers on Instagram, which means that if you get lucky, you're going to be able to see the list of followers in chronological order. However, you might also get a random assortment. The good news is that there are other ways that you can check somebody's list of followers.
How to Work Out When Someone Started Following Somebody
Again, back in the day, Instagram was really good about offering up information, like when somebody was last online, and the exact date and time when they started following you. Currently, you aren't able to see this kind of information anymore. Unlike Facebook that has an activity tab, Instagram prefers to keep this information private these days.
If you go to your activity log on Instagram, you're going to see all of your activity, and it will say how many minutes ago you implemented that activity. However, you aren't going to be able to see this for other users. The only two activities that you can track are the date and time of recent posts on Instagram, and direct messages. This is because of Instagram’s new privacy rules.
Can You Sort Instagram Followers by Date?
Just last year, Instagram came out with a new feature which means that you can arrange your followers in different categories. By default, there are two main categories. The first one is going to organize your most recent followers in one group, and the other is going to organize your oldest followers in another group. However, you aren't going to be able to see the exact date of when somebody began to follow you on Instagram.
How to Categorize Instagram Users
Instagram is going to let its users categories followers in subtle categories. When you use this feature, you can put your most recent friends in one group, and the rest in another. The first group is the accounts or content that you engage the most with, and then the second group is the account or content that you engage with the least. Once you have sorted out your followers you're going to have two different categories, which is going to adjust your feed.
This means that you can have content coming up on your news feed that you actually want to see, as opposed to content coming up from followers that you don't actually really interact with all that much. If you are somebody that has a lot of Instagram followers, then this approach can make a real difference. That means you don't have to waste your time scrolling through content that you don't want to see.
Final Thoughts
As we've talked about, there's no direct way to be able to see recent followers on Instagram, especially since Instagram switched up its features a little while ago. This was done for privacy reasons, but of course it is frustrating for some, who want to be able to see who recently followed somebody on Instagram. The best approach to this is to refresh the follower list until you feel like it is in chronological order, but again there are no guarantees that you are going to be able to view this kind of information.