Instagram is constantly retooling its core platform to add features that users will appreciate. Recently, the illustrious app has added several new features that help its billions of daily active users share and connect with their loved ones. The ubiquitous app has designed and launched (or will soon launch) Notes, Candid Stories, and Group Profiles. These features allow users to share their life in unedited ways to find similarities with friends and family.
Uncover Your Thoughts
Similar features on other apps have proved to help people associate themselves with others by relating to each other. They provide an increased level of privacy for the user and the group with whom they intend to share their content rather than it being public for all users to see.
Notes: This new Instagram feature was created for users to share their thoughts and connect with friends. The feature shows up prominently in the user interface and allows up to 60 characters for simple words or emojis. This feature is related to the Skype or Whatsapp status features. These statuses last 24 hours for your friends to see and react to your Note. Replies are shown as Direct Messages (DMs) and have become an excellent feature for connecting with friends daily based on similar feelings.
Share Memories to Create New Ones
Since people enjoy sharing throughout their day by posting on their Stories, Instagram has developed several features to make it easier for users to connect with others through their stories and allow them to have fun while connecting.
Add Yours: The Add Yours feature is to connect with your friends and family by sharing similar pictures relating to a prompt. This feature allows you to connect to others in a spontaneous manner.
Pass it On: Meta is trying to add to the Instagram feature by adding the Pass It On feature. If this feature is added, it would allow users to invite their friends and family to connect and share their pictures.
Candid: Instagram plans to test how Candid stories work for their users. Candid stories allow users to capture and share a photo in real-time. It prompts users to share an unedited photo and only makes it visible to those who share their own. It is a similar feature to TikTok Now and BeReal. BeReal is a newer social media app that prompts users to post a photo within 2 minutes of being notified. Instagram’s attempt is to have users share more about their daily life without allowing any edits or setting up for the ‘perfect’ picture.
Participate in Groups
People create group chats on Instagram with increasing regularity. They generate these group chats to share content, bond and make plans with friends or family. Instagram group chats are so popular that they created a new feature called Group Profiles. This will allow people to connect with friends in more spontaneous ways.
Group Profiles: People can connect with their friends by creating and joining a new type of profile that will allow those involved to share posts and stories to that profile. Whenever content is shared to this Group Profile, people will only share content with group members.
Collaborative Collections: This feature allows people to connect with friends over their shared interests by sharing posts to a collaborative collection in their group or DMs. People can start or add to a collaborative collection by saving the post from the feed or by sharing the post 1:1 with a friend via DM and then saving it.
Instagram, What’s Next?
Instagram users continuously wonder what is on the horizon for the app that never sleeps. These new features detailed above are prompting unedited content to help people connect easier and in more casual ways. While we don’t know what is next, we do know that there always will be a next new feature.
