3 min read
Social Media platform, Instagram, has announced a bunch of new features for Android users. Meta (Instagram parent feature), announced in an official blog post that it is adding Notes, Candid Stories, and Group Profiles, giving its users more ways to stay connected to their friends and family using different formats.
The new Instagram ‘Notes’ feature is a new way of sharing your mind on the platform. Users can share whatever they want in the form of text (up to 60 characters) and emojis. In order to use the Instagram Notes feature, you need to head to your inbox, select any of your followers or close friends and post it.
Notes will be visible for 24 hours and displayed on top of your inbox. Viewers’ responses will appear in DMs. It’s an interesting idea — a way to send a quick note to a bunch of friends.
Though you will not be notified that a friend has posted a Note — you’ll have to check your Inbox to see it. And since Notes will disappear within 24 hours, you’ll have to check frequently. You can’t send individual Notes — unless you only have one “close friend” (more on this below). They are really meant to be sent to groups of people.
Another interesting feature that Meta added to the app is ‘Candid Stories.’ This feature is under testing, and it will notify users to take a picture of what they are doing at the moment. The candid images will only be visible to those who also share their own Candid Stories. If you are not a fan of this feature, you can turn it off under Settings. Meta plans to roll out Candid Stories for Facebook soon.
Instagram has also added ‘Group Profiles’ where people can join this new type of profile and share posts/stories with their friends. The content of this group will only be shared with the group and not with your followers. You can create a new Group Profile by tapping the plus (+) icon and selecting Group Profiles.
Instagram is also testing the ‘Collaborative Collections’ feature that will allow users to connect with friends “over their shared interests by saving posts to a collaborative collection in your group or 1:1 DMs.” Features that are under testing will roll out very soon, while other features are already live.
You’ll see your Close friends list — all your contacts who qualify will be checked and their names will be at the top of the page. If more people are checked than you want to send to, you can either uncheck as many as you like or use the Clear all button on top of the list. But be aware that this will clear your entire Close friends list (for the entire app, not just for this individual message). You’ll then need to start from scratch and check off each person who you want to include as a close friend.
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