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For over 10 years, Instagram has been a cornerstone of the online presence for millions of people and organizations. The online social network has 500 million daily users, and for 10 years, one feature that's been requested over and over has been the option to add more links to the Instagram bios. Instagram has finally given in to the will of the people. Now all accounts — personal, business, and creator — can add five links to their bios. And if you're looking to upgrade your pics, check out these top phones with cameras for ultrawide photography.
How to create Instagram Stories like an influencer
A how-to guide for one of Instagram's most popular features, used by millions daily
Whether you utilize them or not, Instagram Stories have become an integral part of the platform. Initially, many users were skeptical, as the home feed seemed to serve the same purpose. But Instagram Stories were created to allow users to quickly update their followers on their whereabouts and important life events right from their favorite Android device, all without cluttering the home feed with multiple posts.
Instagram is a social media giant. Look at how other platforms borrow and adapt Instagram's features. Snapchat put a twist on sharing images, and TikTok identified the addictive nature of an endless feed. Despite setting trends and breaking new ground, Instagram is conservative when it comes to file formats. You can upload amazing photos taken with the best camera phone in the world, but you can't upload an animated GIF.
We know Instagram became a social media giant by letting people easily share photographs and videos. But it looks like even this visually-oriented platform isn't immune to the lure of social audio tools like Twitter Spaces, Facebook Live Audio Rooms, or Clubhouse. You can already send voice notes via Instagram DMs, but an interesting discovery by Alessandro Paluzzi — a developer who reverse engineers apps to find upcoming new features — makes it look like more Instagram audio might be on the way.
YouTube Music is forcing Instagram and Snapchat stories icons into its share sheet for some users
Even if you don't have either of the apps installed
YouTube Music is one of many Google apps that use their own share sheet on Android. Instead of adopting the default one, they have a custom design (Photos, News, Maps, YouTube, Twitter) and can include whatever targets they want. That's why you can see your contacts in Photos, for example. But YouTube Music is taking this privilege a little far now by adding icons for Snapchat Stories and Instagram Stories among your apps.
Instagram Reels officially goes global to face off against TikTok
What a time for choreographed lipsync karaoke partiers
Instagram, and then all of Facebook, famously and shamelessly copied the feature that made Snapchat stand out of the crowd: Stories. Now, Instagram is turning its attention toward the latest hot social media platform, TikTok, and has released its own take on it called Reels. The feature, which has been in testing since at least November and seeded to Brazil, is now available globally.
Not content to simply absorb all of Snapchat's features, Facebook-owned Instagram is now making a play for the music recommendation/performance demographic and aiming to become a hotspot for Live Q&As. The platform has introduced a feature into Stories (the ephemeral feed at the top of the app) that lets users request, receive, and jam out to song suggestions, as well as a new, more official format for Live Q&A sessions.
Instagram Stories let you send disappearing messages to your friends, but until now, you had to send them to all your friends. That's changing now, though, as Instagram has announced a new feature that lets you pare your audience for certain Stories down to just a select subset of your followers.
Following the rise of Snapchat, nearly every social media and messaging app introduced ways to share snippets of your day. These often include videos which are typically limited to a predetermined duration and expire after 24 hours. Instagram Stories were previously restricted to 15-second clips and those longer than this duration would be trimmed before sharing, but the company appears to be tweaking this cap.
Instagram is making it easier for users to buy the stuff they see brands post in Stories. The photo-sharing platform started testing the Shopping in Stories feature in June; as of today, it's available to businesses based in 46 countries. There's also a new Shopping channel prominently featured in Explore.
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- Instagram has officially announced the "questions sticker." It's basically what we thought it'd be, plus the ability to reshare the question (and your answer) in a new Instagram story.
It seems like Instagram is in the news every other day. Highlights include its new Lite and IGTV apps, though there are several Instagram app tweaks sprinkled all throughout. Now, the Facebook-owned company has added the ability to ask questions in its Stories, a feature I'm surprised wasn't already there.
Weeks after its official end, it feels like winter is finally relenting, and Google seems to be getting into the vernal spirit: the company shared a number of spring-themed wallpapers on its Instagram Story yesterday, featuring its trademark color scheme in a variety of warm-weather scenes with the message "Happy Spring Screening." One of the screens in particular, featuring Google-colored ice pops, looks like it could be a tease for the full name of the upcoming Android P—but it almost certainly isn't.
Instagram has always allowed you to add previously-taken pictures and videos to your Story, but the app imposed one limitation - the media had to be less than 24 hours old. I honestly never noticed that, but it seems silly. Instagram now seems to think so too, and has removed that limit from the mobile apps.
Instagram added 'Stories' a while back, enabling users to post photos and short videos that only last 24 hours. Even though it's a direct clone of Snapchat's own Stories feature, there are more people using it than the collective userbase of Snapchat itself. So, it only makes sense that Instagram would continue to improve it, and now you can reply to Stories with photos and videos.
Instagram created a carbon copy of Snapchat stories last year, but now the company is making them far more discoverable. In a blog post, Instagram announced that Stories will now be accessible by location and hashtags.
Once upon a time, Instagram was just for sharing photos, mostly of food. But over the past year or so, the app greatly expanded in functionality. Live streaming is now supported, multi-photo posts have been added, and the app now has Snapchat-like disappearing photos and videos.
Instagram's Stories is a blatant copy of Snapchat Stories, so it's not really a huge surprise to see another feature carried over. In this update, Instagram is getting one-finger zoom - simply hold the record button and slide your finger up or down to zoom. Wonder where they got that idea from?