Instagram Updates Web App And Adds More Features To Mobile App

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, posted an Instagram reel on Tuesday announcing two major changes to Instagram’s platform that will make users’ lives significantly easier, including scheduled posts and a seamless desktop version of the app. Due to the long public demand for these features, in the video, Mosseri says;

“I call this a ‘finally feature’ as it is one of those things we really should have gotten to a long time ago”.

🎉 New Features 🎉

Some “finally features” that I think you’re going to be excited about…

– Schedule Posts (coming soon)
– IG Web Updates pic.twitter.com/5tyMxWh1n8

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) November 8, 2022

The scheduled posts feature is aimed at helping creators and businesses plan their content ahead of time. With the update, creators will now be able to schedule their posts up to 75 days in advance. The feature is currently available on Android but will be coming soon to IOS.

Plan ahead 📅

Creators and business accounts can now schedule posts up to 75 days out.

Available on Android (iOS coming soon) 🤩 pic.twitter.com/kuSbwqCCNR

— Instagram (@instagram) November 8, 2022

The other major announcement is a complete revamp of Instagram’s website. Currently, the web version does not resemble the app’s and can be difficult to navigate. To remedy that issue, Instagram is unveiling a new Instagram.com.

“We know a lot of people use the web to multitask, so we wanted to make Instagram as great of an experience as possible online,” said Mosseri.

The new website is supposed to be “faster, cleaner and easier to use” and will be designed to be compatible with large-screen monitors that have become the new norm for many.

The new design moves the menus and icons like home, search, messages, and notifications to a side pane. What’s more, the explore/search page shows a full grid spanning across the monitor. The new sidebar expands and collapses based on the screen you are on.

In the older design for the web, when you opened a profile, options like Posts, Guides, Reels and Tagged were hosted on top of the grid. So if you wanted to switch to another tab, you had to scroll to the top from wherever you were. The new design solves this problem by moving these options to the side. This redesign , rolling out slowly to users, will make it easier to use Instagram on large monitors while switching between different tabs.

Earlier this month, Instagram said it will soon allow some creators to mint and sell NFTs directly in the app. People on Instagram will be able to buy the NFTs directly within the app. Meta says the process will take place via traditional in-app purchases across iOS and Android. And for now, Instagram is not taking a cut of the creators’ revenues. Meta is testing this new feature with a small group of creators in the U.S. and plans to expand it to more countries in the future.

Instagram is also adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet, which join the blockchains and wallets that it already supports, including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet, Ethereum, Polygon, and Flow. In addition, information for select collections where the metadata has been enriched by OpenSea, such as collection name and descriptions, will now be available on Instagram.