In the early days of social media, 15 to 20 years ago, the ‘social graph’ was the basis for the algorithms that determined what content we see on the platforms. The social graph prioritized showing us the posts from the people and brands we followed or were connected to.

Fast forward to the arrival of TikTok around 7 years ago and we saw the beginnings of a major shift in social media from an algorithmic perspective where the social graph ceased being the main determinent of what content you saw and instead the ‘interest graph’ became the basis for the content that got served to you.

What is the interest graph, you may ask? In nutshell, it determines what content to show you on social media based on the things you like to see or consume there irrespective of who you follow or are connected to on the platforms.

TikTok pioneered this approach and literally disrupted social media from this perspective leading to its meteoric rise in the last 5 years or so. Infact, every social media platform today has copied this approach from TikTok leading to the term ‘tiktokification’ being used to describe the impact its had across the board.

From a social media marketing or brand building perspective, unlike when the social graph underpinned how the algorithms worked on the platforms, and it actually mattered how many followers you had or who you were connected to, the interest graph only cares to show content based on user interests and how they engage with it.

This means you can have zero followers on TikTok or Instagram but if the content is actually good and gets lots of engagement such as likes, comments, and shares, the algorithm will amplify the visibility of this content to more and more users on this basis alone, more or less exclusively aligned to their interests.

To summarize this major shift, the algorithms on social media as we know it today prioritize keeping users engaged on the platforms by pushing an endless stream of content based on the things it knows they like to consume there.

The social media algorithms also use this approach to verify if the content is actually great based on the engagement it generates with the users on the platforms. This is the reason why someone or a small brand with a handful of TikTok followers can suddenly have one short video go viral and get millions of views globally.

In the current interest graph era of social media, the algorithms act as the tastemakers for content you like to find you instead of the other way around. So, basically, make great content focussed on the interests of your target audiences to win on social media. It’s that simple.