Los Angeles, August 7
Instagram has launched three new major features -- Repost, Interactive Map, and Friends tab -- for its users.
The Repost feature will help users share others' content with your own followers and friends. The feature will give credit to the original poster.
'Interactive Map' feature will remind you of Snapchat Map. With this option, one can share their last active location with a chosen group of friends. The user can see their locations and content they've posted from interesting places. Also, the feature is designed with safety as a priority--parents of supervised teen accounts will be notified if their child turns on location sharing.
"Share locations with friends and see what's happening around you on the Instagram map. And if you're a parent with supervision set up for your teen, you have control over whether they can share their location, and who they're sharing with," said Instagram.
The Maps feature is off until users choose to turn location sharing on.
The Friends tab within Reels helps users see what their friends have liked, commented on, or recommended via Blends.
On Wednesday, Instagram shared these updates through an official blog post, accompanied by a reel from platform chief Adam Mosseri, where he opened up about the new features in detail.
— ANI
Reader Comments
As a parent, I appreciate the safety measures for teen accounts. But Instagram should make these privacy settings more prominent - many Indian parents aren't tech-savvy enough to find these options buried in settings.
The interactive map looks cool for travel content creators! Imagine discovering hidden cafes in Delhi or beaches in Goa through this. But please Instagram, fix your app performance first - it's already so laggy on mid-range phones.
Another day, another feature that makes Instagram more like other apps. First they copied Stories from Snapchat, now the map feature. Why not focus on making the core experience better instead of constant feature bloat?
The Friends tab in Reels is actually useful! In India we're always sharing funny videos in WhatsApp groups - now we can see what our friends are enjoying without spamming everyone 😂 Hope they add regional language support soon though!
Good features but Instagram is becoming too complicated. Remember when it was just about sharing photos? Now it's trying to do everything - messaging, shopping, reels, stories. Sometimes simple is better yaar!
We welcome thoughtful discussions from our readers. Please keep comments respectful and on-topic.