Instagram has recently been very active both in terms of contact with press and implementation of new abilities. Instagram invited the journalists over to their office, the platform representatives were speaking on various conferences, and many new abilities and improvements were promised, tested and implemented — all during the course of the last few weeks. There is a lot to unpack here, so without further ado, let’s dive into the latest news!
Reaching 1 billion monthly users
Instagram had 40 million active montly users when it was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Ever since Instagram audience has been growing at a tremendous pace and it has just recently reached 1 billion.
Testing ability to limit story viewing to specific friends
The new feature called “Friend List Stickers” lets users publish stories that are only visible to specific groups of friends. It’s promising to be extremely useful to users with public accounts who would like to have stories seen by a close group of users, rather than the whole audience. Instagram currently allows hiding stories from specific users, however, it’s not convenient for Instagram users with a lot of followers.
No more snitching on users screenshoting Stories
The Story posters stopped receiving notifications about being screenshot, as the company told BuzzFeed News.
Adding shopping tag links for in-app purchases
Retailers can now tag and link to products showcased in their Instagram Stories. Instagram users can click on the shopping bag icon in the Story for more details on the product and purchase the it without leaving the app.
Testing music stickers for stories
The feature called “Music Stickers” allows users to search for music clips to play over their Stories. Collection of available tunes can be found under different tabs labelled “Trending,” “Genres,” and “Moods”.
Debuting IGTV
Instagram has launched IGTV, a separate mobile app where people can watch vertical, up to hour long videos. Previously the platform didn’t allow uploading videos that are longer than 60 seconds.