We’re halfway into 2018 and popular photo-sharing app Instagram has already rolled out 21 new features. Instagram is growing at a rapid pace, and for businesses in particular, the app has given its users a chance to grow their audiences with the new features.
Instagram has made major changes to its Application Program Interface (API), as did Facebook, in order to protect data and privacy, but affected many business dependent on their Instagram audience. But here are a few key changes that Instagram has brought to the table so far –
- The apps that helped users analyse their likes, follows and comments no longer work.
- Instagram likes are now private, which means that you cannot see the posts that other people or your followers are liking.
- Since Instagram likes are private, you can search for user-generated content only through hashtags.
- You will no longer be able to post or delete comments from anywhere except with Instagram with a personal account. This means if you want to use community management features like Later’s Conversations, you’ll need to switch to an Instagram business profile.
- You can now schedule your posts on Instagram using the Later’s ‘notifications’ publishing method.
- The new algorithm filters out and chooses what posts you can see on your feed based on your interests or timeliness. People now see 90% posts from their friends and family.
- Rather than unfollow accounts, you now have a ‘mute’ option, meaning you will still follow them, but not get any updates.
- You can now link profile names and hashtags in your bio, which will lead users to the particular profile or hashtag when they click on it.
- Type mode, new fonts and gifs were added to the Instagram story features.
- Business profiles are now able to ‘promote’ a particular post by turning it into an advertisement.
- You can also repost Instagram stories with the help of a button that appears in your DM when someone tags you on their stories.
- Similar to a poll, the new emoji slider polls let users pick how much they like or dislike something with an animated emoji on a sliding scale.
That’s not all, Instagram is also taking a step further to prevent cyberbullying on the app with a soon-to-be-launched anti-bullying filter. “This new filter hides comments containing attacks on a person’s appearance or character, as well as threats to a person’s well-being or health”, Instagram said in a statement.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Instagram will also soon allow its users to enjoy long-form videos. A major game-changer for the app, this supposed new feature will ditch the 60-second limit in support for videos that run upto an hour long.
Excited much?!
