Instagram New Features-Know Everything About It

Photo and video-sharing social networking service Instagram owned by Facebook Inc. has introduced a new feature to make a close friends list on Stories and share with just the people you’ve added.

It will let you share public posts to your Stories. This feature has been introduced after introducing other new features such as a simplified Inbox, and more action buttons for the businesses.

With below new feature, user can share posts of different public accounts in their Stories feed directly, currently for Android users followed by iOS users in the coming days.

Instagram app was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010 exclusively on iOS, later on this app was owned by Facebook.

For the Android users, this feature can be seen under the share option on posts. If you like a post and wish to share it with your followers, hit the airplane-like share button below the post and a new option to Create a story with this post will now appear. Clicking on that option will directly send you to your Stories section, where the post will appear as a sticker.

The original user’s handle who posted the photo/video will appear below the sticker, and you can click it to go their profile and see the original post as well. You can rotate, scale and move the sticker, and tap it to explore other styles as well.

Note: Posts can be shared from public accounts only, and if users don’t want their posts shared to stories by other people, they can easily opt out in settings.

New Ways to Interact on Instagram – Questions Sticker

Use questions sticker for music recommendations in Stories, you’ll see a new interactive sticker in Stories that lets you count down to exciting moments together with your friends altogether your friends can respond to your questions sticker with a song from the music library, and you can share your favorites to your story.

A new music icon will appear on using the questions sticker on Instagram. When your friends will need to respond on this, they can choose a song directly from the music library to share with you.

Through question sticker in Live, you can ask questions to people you admire. For this go to someone’s story and respond to their questions sticker. If they go Live to answer, you’ll see “Q&A” in your stories tray.

Use interactive countdown sticker in Instagram Stories

You can add a countdown sticker to your story by selecting it from the sticker tray after taking a photo or video. You can also give a name to your countdown, can add an end date or time and also can customize the color before sharing to your story.

Once you created countdown on Instagram story, it will be available in your sticker tray to reuse in new stories until the countdown ends.

Your friends can also tap on your countdown to follow or share it to their own story; anyone who follows or shares your countdown will get a notification when the countdown ends. The countdown sticker is available globally on iOS and Android apps. This is one of the Instagram New Features.

Instagram 2018 – Review

• Most Used Face Filter in Instagram Stories: Heart Eyes
• Most Used Giphy Sticker on Instagram Stories: Heart Love Sticker by Arata
• Number of times Heart for Link was used in comments: 14 billion
• Happiest Geotagged Location in the World (highest use of smiling face in the caption): Disneyland Tokyo
• Top Niche Community Trend: ASMR
• Highest Growth Hashtag Community: #fortnite
• Top Fandom Community: BTS (#btsarmy)
• Top Dance Movement: #inmyfeelingschallenge
• Top Advocacy Hashtags: #metoo (1.5 million), #timesup (597K), #marchforourlives (562K)

Instagram – More accessible for People with Visual Impairments

Instagram worked for 285 million people in the world who have visual impairments, by-

1.  Introducing automatic alternative text so such people can hear descriptions of photos through their screen reader when they use Feed, Explore and Profile. Instagram used object recognition technology to generate a description of photos for screen readers so you can hear a list of items that photos may contain as you browse the app.
2. Introducing custom alternative text so these people can add a richer description of their photos when they upload a photo. People using screen readers will be able to hear this description.

This is one of the latest introduced Instagram New Features.

Instagram improved your profile

Instagram is testing some features, re-arranging icons and buttons at the top of your profile. It is also improving the way you navigate between tabs to make profiles easier and cleaner to use.

The photos and videos you’ve shared on your grid won’t change. If you see some re-arrangement of icons and buttons and you want to give suggestions, then you can also give feedback to on your respective profiles.

Instagram on Reducing in-Authentic Activity

Instagram is working on to reduce in-authentic activity such as inappropriate increase in number of audiences, likes, follows and comments using third party apps. Some people are using unfair means to increase their popularity and to counter these abuses, Instagram has built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use these services and remove the inauthentic activity.

As per Instagram, “This type of behavior is bad for the community, and third-party apps that generate inauthentic likes, follows and comments violate our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.”, this way Instagram building genuine platform for the people and its community.

Instagram developing new tools for Bullying

Instagram has introduced some tools to limit bullying on its platform, if you found any hurtful comment, behavior on Instagram, you can report it.

Instagram has developed new latest tools to help combat bullying, including a new way to identify and report bullying in photos.

Instagram is also introducing a camera effect to help spread kindness in Stories and combat bullying on its platform. They are using machine learning technology to proactively detect bullying in photos and their captions and send them to their community operations team to review.

They have also introduced bullying comments filter on Live videos, on Feed, on Explore and on Profile to hide offensive comments, introduced manual filter, and filter to hide most reported words.

Instagram has also introduced kindness camera effect together with New York Times best-selling teen author, dancer and actor, Maddie Ziegler to spread positive-ness. As per Instagram, “If you follow Maddie, you will have the camera effect automatically.”

As per Instagram, “Swipe to open the camera, tap the face icon at the bottom and choose the new camera effect. In selfie mode, hearts will fill the screen and you’ll be encouraged to tag a friend you want to support. Your friend will receive a notification that you mentioned them in your story. They can share it to their own story or use the camera effect to spread kindness to someone else. If you switch to the rear camera, you’ll see an overlay of kind comments in many languages. If you aren’t a follower of Maddie but you see someone else with the effect, tap “try it” to add it to your camera.”

How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts?

You can create multiple Instagram accounts provided you use different email addresses and phone numbers for each account. If you already have an Instagram account even you can create a new Instagram account while logged in into your previous account, this is one of the Instagram New Features.

1. How to create new Instagram Account along with existing account?

Here are the steps-

• Open your current Instagram account and go to your profile
• Find and tap the gear icon for Settings
• Scroll to the bottom and tap on Add Account button
• DON’T fill in the log in screen, rather at the bottom of the page, tap Sign up button
• You’ll see an option to use Facebook for sign-up. If you’re already using Facebook for your primary account, choose Sign Up With Phone or Email
• Enter your Phone or Email
• If you choose Email, you need to confirm your new account. Open the email from Instagram and select Confirm your email address
• If you choose Phone or mobile number, you need to enter the verification number sent to your phone, tap Next
• Add Instagram profile photo, Name, and Password
• Create a unique username, you can include dots, dashes, or numbers
• You can skip the remaining steps
• You’re logged in to your new account, and can switch to your original account

2. How to link New account with Existing account?

You can do this by following below steps-

• From your existing profile, tap the gear or settings icon in the top right
• Scroll down and tap Add Account
• Enter username and password of the newly created account or log in with Facebook (if this is the first account)

3. How to switch between the accounts or among the accounts if you have more than two accounts?

If you have Instagram version 7.15 for iOS and Android, then only account switching is possible. If you face any issues in switching the account then you need to reinstall the app after deleting the existing one. If you have latest version of the Instagram app then you can switch between the accounts without logout and login again and again.

• Go to your profile
• Tap your username at the top of the screen
• Tap the account you’d like to switch to
• Alternatively, you can switch from any tab via your profile pictures

This way, you can add up 5 accounts on a single device and can switch among them. In the same way, you can manage the push notifications for all your accounts from respective profile >> Settings >> Push Notifications.

4. How to permanently delete Instagram account?

If you want to delete some of your Instagram accounts permanently then you would not be able to use the usernames of those accounts in future and also would not be able to create new account with those usernames once deleted.

Apart from this, your photos, videos, comments, likes and followers will be permanently removed. If you don’t want to permanently delete the account then you can temporarily disable the account.

If you are sure to delete your account then follow below steps-

• Go to the Delete Your Account page. If you’re not logged into Instagram on the web, you’ll be asked to log in first. You can’t delete your account from within the Instagram app.
• Select an option from the drop-down menu next to Why are you deleting your account? and re-enter your password. The option to permanently delete your account will only appear after you’ve selected a reason from the menu.
• Click or tap Permanently delete my account.
• If you’d like to delete a different account, click the username in the top-right of the Delete Your Account page, tap/click on  next to username and select Log Out. Log back in as the account you want to delete and follow the directions above.

5. How to temporarily disable Instagram account?

If you temporarily disable your account, your profile, photos, comments and likes will be hidden until you reactivate it by logging back in. To temporarily disable your account:

1. Log into instagram.com from a mobile browser or computer. You can’t temporarily disable your account from within the Instagram app.
2. Tap or click person image/icon in the top right and then select Edit Profile.
3. Scroll down, then tap or click Temporarily disable my account in the bottom right.
4. Select an option from the drop-down menu next to Why are you disabling your account? and re-enter your password. The option to disable your account will only appear after you’ve selected a reason from the menu.
5. Tap or click Temporarily Disable Account.

You’ll need to be able to log into your account to temporarily disable it.

Image credit- Canva