The algorithm is here! 🎉
We’re excited to announce that our new algorithm is now live, providing you with a more personalized and enjoyable experience on the PortraitMode app.
With the new algorithm, we have prioritized photos from users you follow, giving you more control over the content you see on the platform. While you can still discover new artists, the algorithm ensures that you see a mix of photos from your followed users along with recently posted photos by others.
On the website, the photos remain in a chronological order for now.
📸 Browse photos by camera models
As announed earlier, we’ve also introduced a new feature that allows you to browse photos on the platform by camera models. This allows you to gain inspiration and explore photos taken with cameras that interest you.
This feature is now also available in both, the Android and IOS app.
🔍 New “Discover” screen
Furthermore, we have replaced the previous “Search” screen with the new “Discover” screen, which incorporates the photo of the day, featured artists, and more. This change allows us to showcase important features from our website, including the Potd.
To access the Discover screen, simply tap on the magnifying glass icon located at the bottom of the PortraitMode app.
🎁 Wrapping up
We hope you will enjoy the new user experience improvements brought by our latest app update. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line below.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to download the PortraitMode Android or IOS app.
Cheers,
David
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4 Comments
I have mixed feelings about this.
I appreciate your effort in trying to grow this platform while at the same time making it easier for us to find interesting pictures and other users/photographers. So far I have seen some really nice images from a few days (people I don´t follow) or even months ago (exclusively by people I follow) that have flown under my radar previously. I try to catch up on all the new uploads every day but I still seem to miss quite a few by the looks of it.
That being said, some of the images that show up are genuinely bad. They may fit the websites definition of street photography because they include an “indication of recent human activity”, but most people, and that includes me, wouldn´t call it street photography.
Some recent examples:
– tilted images of facades
– a bench
– close-ups of stickers on poles
– a fountain
– a digger on a construction site
Sure, there is something to be said about personal preference when it comes to street photography and I understand that some may consider it street photography, but I don´t want those images on my feed.
Unfortunately there is nothing we as users can do to manipulate or control our feed, which was somewhat promised in the announcement to this algorithm.
From what I´ve seen so far, it will select random images of the recent uploads and put them on your feed, along with uploads (new and old) of the people you follow. An image getting likes will boost its chances to be shown on the feeds of others even after a few days of the initial upload.
Don´t get me wrong, this is not a bad system. I would simply like to have a “don´t show again” or “not interested” button so that I won´t have to see the same bad images (that I can´t report because the fit the websites description of street photography) on my feed multiple times. This would go a long way in making the experience more enjoyable I believe.
I also wish we would still be able to browse images chronologically on the app, it can be a lot of fun.
Hopefully this didn´t come across as too negative, have a nice day and keep up the good work.
Grüße
Hey Moritz!
Happy to clarify a few things.
This is the first iteration of the algorithm, which is meant to show you more photos from people you follow. It is definitely going to be extended to factor in other parameters in the future. What we have right now is simply a starting point.
The reason why you see older photos from people you follow is, because they haven’t been marked as “viewed” before. This is something we are just starting now as a part of the algorithm. We thought about factoring in things such as time, only showing you photos that were posted – for instance – in the past 14 days. We haven’t decided on that yet though.
Right now, there is no system for “quality” in place. We do not favor photos by likes to give everyone a fair chance for their photo to be seen. Is that a good thing? Not 100% sure. It can be viewed both ways I think.
The mix between recently posted photos and photos from people you follow is currently 50/50. This might need adjustment as well. One problem I have when scrolling through the app is that I can’t easily distinguish if a photo is from someone I follow, or someone else.
While you now have more control over what types of photos you will see on the platform, there is no system in place to define what types of photos you don’t want to see. This is a bit trickier on the technical side, depending on how advanced we want it to be. If we simply stop showing you photos from authors that you are “not interested” in, this would be similar to “blocking” them.
Right now, we are analyzing and collecting feedback to fine-tune the current iteration of the algorithm & extend it later on.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Moritz! I really appreciate that. Let me know if you have any further questions or thoughts.
>>we have prioritized photos from users you follow
For me this approach doesn’t work well – believe it or not, I had to unfollow some users because of this.
I fully agree with Moritz about the quality of the content here – I save myself by just blocking such authors, so far it’s the only way to filter your feed, as I understand.
Also I’m not sure if reporting of photos works – I reported some, long time ago, and they are still in place. I can see that amount of totally unrelated uploads has become overwhelming (cats at home, sunsets, architecture, typology, pigeons, trash bins/poles/benches etc etc.), and I understand this process is probably manual and takes some time, but still…
Nevertheless, I appreciate your efforts, David, and wish you good luck.
Hey Max!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Reporting does work, though we’ve decided on giving users the benefit of the doubt unless photos are clearly not meeting the guidelines.
We do now allow for photos that don’t feature people in it based on a poll we ran earlier this year where over 80% voted for posting such types of photos.
Cheers,
David