I just had an idea for a simple no-code "algorithm" in bubble to show posts more often based on user engagement. Would this work?

Questions
1

Hey guys. I am building a social app. I have an issue where 1) I don’t know how to code so I can’t code an algorithm myself, and 2) Sorting user content in repeating groups can get really monotone when the only sorting options are by creation date, random sorting, last modified, most liked one, so on. I want posts to show more when the engagement is higher, similar to what instagram does.

So this is my idea for a basic algorithm in bubble, tell me if you have suggestions, alternatives, or if you think this may work.

  1. Posts have a data field called “points” of type integer. I create a repeating group (the feed) with posts sorted randomly. So you will get posts at random regardless of creation date, likes, or whatever. Now. Whenever an user clicks on a post, and stays there for at least x amount of seconds, I will add a point to that individual post. This would mean the user was engaged.

  2. On another repeating group (feed) in a different page, the posts shown are sorted by points and would only show posts from the last 7 days (7 days just to keep things in the app fresh, no specific reason in terms of the algorithm).

Any thoughts or opinions, or suggestions on this “algorithm”? I’m just hoping to create a little more variety and I also want content shown to reflect user engagement a little more since the sorting options can be really monotone as I said. I’m also not sure if the random sorting would get the job done. I know there’s no such thing as truly random. But. Could it be random enough to pull off something like this where certain posts wouldn’t be significantly favored in being shown too much to users hence gaining a significantly unfair amount of points?

2

I think you might have trouble getting the points value in the way you describe. Even if a user doesn’t like a post, finding out how long they’ve stayed there (X number of seconds) would be hard to get.

But in general, yes, you can have behind the scenes points that you use to order posts by in later RGs!

Kevin
Free no-code bootcamp by Airdev

3

You can use a third-party analytic service connected to an API on your bubble app and then adjust the engagement level based on the unique id of that post, I don’t recommend this path for your MVP.

The method you described above seems like a smart workaround. You can combine the average amount they’ve stayed there and simply take the median value based on the amount of visitors to that topic.