I'm involved in a little Instagram experiment. Don’t tell Instagram, though. It doesn't know yet and I'm not sure it will like it.
It wasn't my idea. In fact, the trial I'm a part of, or rather the web app I'm running, is the brainchild of Fueled founder Rameet Chawla. It's called Lovematically, and the concept is simple: It's a service that automatically likes every new photo from up to 150 people you follow on Instagram.
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This could seem a bit underhanded: I'm not viewing your photos, but I'm liking them. I need only open up the app on my phone and see all the latest pictorial works from my network in chronological order. So what's the difference if I like now or later? According to Chawla, quite a bit.
An app developer by trade, Chawla fully expects Instagram to shut down his program, but he did it as a sort of sociological and marketing experiment, and the more he explained his thinking behind it, the less he sounded like a prankster and more like a genius. Here's how he explained Lovematically's origins in a post on Fueled's blog:
Someone asked me why I didn’t like their latest photo on Instagram ... Instagram content consists of relatively small bites of content ... So if you don’t like someone’s post, it’s basically because you skipped past it and consciously chose to not like it.
Which made me think, if all my Instagram friends are Like-starved, why not satiate them in an automated way that’s easier for me too?
Like most approbations on social media, Likes create pleasure. The more Likes your get on your Instagram photo, the more dopamine your body releases into your brain. Research suggests that the highest dopamine delivery actually comes right before you see the likes — it’s the anticipation of the reward that spurs dopamine production. Indeed, according to Psychology Today, the Internet has us on a dangerous continuous dopamine loop.
But there's more to the psychology of Likes than that. When you Like someone's photo, it may change how they view you — and perhaps how they view and respond to your Instagram photos.
Humanity's natural tendency toward reciprocation comes into play here. I will more consistently Like photos from users who have Liked my images, even if the photo offers only mild amusement. They're getting the Like for a chuckle instead of a guffaw.
Part of Chawla's plan is to illustrate how Likes can work as a marketing tool. He's been using his software for a few months and noticed that more people are liking his Instagram snaps. Chawla insists he has not changed how often he Instagrams or the style and quality of his work, but engagement on each image has shot up significantly.
The experiment seems to be working in real life, too. People recognize Chawla on the street (he has a rather distinctive look: long black hair, a bushy, dark beard, intense eyes, a three-piece suit and a large hat), and tell him they "love what he's been doing on Instagram lately."
As Chawla sees it, this is a byproduct of his Likes coming in first — or close to first — on their Instagram feed. If you're familiar with Instagram, you know that after you get a dozen Likes, Instagram simply lists the number. So being among that first group of Likers can increase your visibility on the platform dramatically. Lovematically Likes within two minutes of the Instagram image's appearance on the feed, so Chawla's name is often the first one everyone sees.
Perhaps you weren't following Chawla before. But if you are following someone he also follows, you'll start to notice his name. Perhaps you'll follow him as well.
I found Chawla’s premise so intriguing, I had to try it out for myself. I signed into the Lovematically Web service, gave it access to my Instagram account — and now I'm Liking a lot of Instagram photos.
It's not a foolproof concept. For some big-name Instagram accounts, such as actor James Franco's "jamesfrancotv," which has more than a million followers, the Likes came in so thick and fast that mine was nowhere near the top of the list. Even for accounts with follower counts in the thousands, I was listed among the first 15 or so — but not typically the first. Only on accounts with fewer than 2,000 followers, could I consistently be among the first few Likers.
Somewhat embarrassingly, Lovematically auto-likes all of my own Instagrams. I didn’t notice this until I started getting Lovematically’s daily report on my Instagram activity. In addition to showing me how many successful Likes I posted (usually between 70 and 90, depending on how many people I follow posted to the service), it includes thumbnails of all the photos I liked. I soon noticed my own work in there. Sure enough, I was the first person to like my own photos. Sheesh. Fortunately, Instagram lets us unlike stuff.
During my trial, one of my Twitter and Instagram friends noticed the odd activity and finally asked me outright if I was running a bot. This post is his answer.
This gaming of the Instagram system offers a rather stark illustration of the power of Likes as both a psychological and marketing tool. It also made me realize how easy it could be to manipulate people and their actions on social media.
If Instagram does shut down whatever backdoor Chawla is using to trigger these Likes, it'll be back to getting engagement the old-fashioned way — at least until someone else figures out another way to make sure you're the first Like on all social media.