Before growth hacking was mainstream, teenage creators formed private group chats to share knowledge. They collaboratively decoded the Instagram algorithm, sharing tips on hashtags and what content worked, creating a powerful competitive advantage for the members of the private community.

Platform algorithms now prioritize showing users content relevant to their interests, regardless of who they follow. This means a brand's follower count is less important than the relevance of each individual piece of content. Any creator can achieve massive reach on a single post, making it a true meritocracy.

Historically, Instagram Stories only reached existing followers, making them a retention tool. A new update allowing anyone to reshare any public Story transforms them into a growth engine, creating a virality loop that lets creators reach non-followers and gain new ones.

In Instagram's early days, the non-curated "Explore" feed was a key growth lever. Creators discovered that driving high engagement in the first five minutes of a post could trigger a massive, exponential boost from the algorithm, turning 600 likes into 100,000 in hours.

According to Instagram's CEO, users now share more content via direct messages daily than they post to the public feed. This fundamental shift makes 'shareability' the most critical metric for creators aiming for growth, prioritizing content that compels users to send it to friends.

Platforms like TikTok have shifted the paradigm where success is tied to each post's individual merit, not the creator's follower base. A single viral video can generate massive reach and sales, even if other posts have low engagement, a trend now adopted by LinkedIn, YouTube, and others.

Learning from Instagram's evolution towards passive consumption, the Sora team intentionally designs its social feed to inspire creation, not just scrolling. This fundamentally changes the platform's incentives and is proving successful, with high rates of daily active creation and posting.

Instagram now lets users explicitly select topics for their Reels feed. This shift means creators with a tight, consistent content focus are more likely to be surfaced repeatedly. Accounts covering multiple disparate topics risk being filtered out as users narrow their preferences, making niche expertise more critical than ever for discovery.

Algorithms on platforms like TikTok and Instagram no longer primarily show content from who you follow. They prioritize content based on a user's current interests. This means the individual merit of a post is more important for reach than your existing follower count, creating opportunity for new creators.