Today, Tuesday, the Instagram photo and video-sharing service announced the launch of several updates aimed at “helping users get closer to the people they care about.”
Instagram, affiliated with Meta, said in a blog post that it had begun launching Notes as a new way to share ideas and see what friends are up to.
Instagram explained that notes are short posts of up to 60 characters using only text and emoji. To leave a note, the user can head to the top of the inbox, then select your followers or people in your close friend list, and the notes will appear at the top of the inbox for 24 hours. Replies to notes will arrive as direct messages in your inbox.
In a post today, Instagram said it is testing new features for Stories with the aim of helping people share in fun and spontaneous ways that will strengthen their relationships with friends.
After Instagram launched its Add Yours feature last year, which allows users to entice others to share their Stories by inviting them to add similar photos, it has now said it is testing an update to the feature where users can invite friends to participate by clicking the pass it on a button.
Instagram said it has also started testing the new Candid feature as a new way that allows users to film themselves when they see other people’s stories and share them with them, and only those who make their stories available to others will see those posts. After that, stories with other people’s posts will appear in separate stories at the top of the home page.
Instagram also said it was testing new features to give users more ways to collaborate and connect with friends in groups, and added that it would soon enable users to create and join a new type of profile, with the aim of sharing posts and stories in a shared, dedicated profile with friends.
When a member shares content to a Group Profile, that content will only be shared with group members rather than followers and will be posted to the group profile instead of the user’s profile. Creating a new Group Profile can be done by clicking on the + button, then selecting Group Profiles.
Finally, Instagram said it was testing a new way for users to connect with friends about common interests by saving posts to a collaborative group in a private group or private messages.
