What is Shares?
A share is the action of sending the post to someone through DMs or reposting it to your own story. In 2024 Instagram stated that sends via DM are the signal that weighs most in recommendations, above likes and comments, because they show the content was worth passing on. Content that gets shared is what a person wants someone else to see: humor, a strong opinion, a surprising fact, something useful for a specific friend. The paper-plane button is the metric; the caption can ask for the send explicitly.