The Latest Updates & Features on Instagram
It seems like every day there’s a new feature or update being announced by our favorite social media platforms. Instagram is one that has been constantly rolling out new features and updates. You may have heard about some of the new features to come at Facebook’s F8, but what about all of the fun stuff that’s happening right now? Have you caught them all? If you didn’t, that’s ok because we’ve got them all broken down for you right here.
What’s New
1. Polling on Instagram Stories with the Emoji Slider Sticker
Instagram had introduced its poll feature to Stories last October, but now they are taking things a step further. Instead of posting a poll that asks your followers to choose between two answers, you can now ask them to rate on a scale with an emoji. For example, you can ask “How much do you love this dress?” with a smiley face emoji and your followers can slide the emoji left or right to cast their vote to mimic a scale of 1-10 but without the numbers.
Photo source: Instagram
2. Share a Song from Spotify on Your Instagram Stories
Have a song you’re totally vibing to right now that you want to share? Or a special #ThrowbackThursday tune that’s too good to keep to yourself? Now you can share what you’re listening to on Spotify to your Instagram Stories and your followers can listen too!
Photo source: Instagram
3. Updates to DM for Business Accounts
Up until this point, messages between a user and a business account worked exactly like messages between users and other users. Meaning, if a user sent your business account a direct message but your business account did not follow that user, the business account would receive the message in a ‘pending’ folder instead of your regular direct messages folder until the communication had been approved. Now, they’ve made things much easier! Every time a user sends a message to a business account, the business account will receive an alert and the message in their direct messages folder.
Photo source: Social Media Today
4. Quick Reply Messages
Ever have frequent questions that you answer with the same type of responses? Now you can create Quick Reply messages that answer all of your commonly received messages and make it easy to respond in seconds!
Photo source: Social Media Today
5. Action Buttons
Just like Facebook, a business account can now include an Action Button to their profile such as “Reserve Now”, “Contact Us”, “Buy Tickets”, etc.
Photo source: Social Media Today
What’s to Come
- Topic Channels: The Discover tab is changing. Mark Zuckerberg is introducing Topic Channels that will allow users to browse content by topics related to their interests as opposed to the current compilation of images you may or may not be interested in.
- Video Chat: Users will soon be able to video chat with one another or with a group! The best part is, you can minimize your chat and continue to scroll through your news feed and browse Instagram.
- AR Camera Effects: Although first introduced for Facebook at F8 in 2017, these new effects are being brought to Instagram.
Sources: Fast Company, Social Media Today, Instagram
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