New and Interesting Features of Instagram You Must Know

When we talk of social media, the first thing which strikes our mind is Instagram. Instagram has been the hot favorite of almost everyone around the world. It has more than 750 million active users and the count is increasing with each passing day.

Let’s have a glance at what new features we have on Instagram.

All New Features of Instagram

As its user network is growing day by day, many new and innovative features are being added to the platform. If you have missed any of these, then this article would help you go through many of the important features released by Instagram.

Let’s have a look at the features added to Instagram.

IGTV

IGTV is a standalone app that enables its users to create, edit and post long-form videos all in one place. What makes it even more interesting is that it supports only Vertical Videos which are full screen.

Before the introduction of IGTV, users could load or post videos of up to 15 seconds in their stories. But, with this, users can post videos for as long as an hour.

IGTV can be used from both the app as well as the web. IGTV will suggest content for users and it will even show the partly viewed videos.

In order to set this, you need to click on the IGTV icon, create a channel, and you are done. Now, go ahead and upload your videos.

Mute Option

You do not want to see posts by some people. Here is a solution now. Just use the mute option and you will no longer hear from that person without letting them know.

In order to use the mute feature, you need to simply click on the three dots (…) on the right of the post and select a MUTE option. On clicking mute, you can select what you do not want to hear from that person. On selecting the apt choice, posts or stories by that person will no longer be shown in your profile.

Video Chat from Instagram Direct

If you love chatting with your friends then this is a feature that would delight you. Irrespective of where you are or from where you belong, this feature will enable you to connect to all your friends far or near.

You can connect to your friends by first adding them to Direct Messages. Once added, you can chat with all your friends in the group with a single tap on the camera icon present in the top right corner of the screen.

Once the camera icon is clicked, it will turn blue in color. Friends can join the call by clicking on the camera icon and once they are done they can easily hang up by clicking on the camera icon once again.

With this feature, you can chat all day long.

Question Stickers in Stories

These question stickers add more interactivity to the stories you share on Instagram. Using these, you can start conversations with your friends much easier.

Your friends can send questions for you to answer or you could prompt something on your post and your friends could reply to the post with one tap on it. They can send as many replies as they would want to.

You and your friends can also respond to questions with music. When using a song, users can even take photos or make a video as the song plays in the background.

Shoppable Story Tags

Why leave the business behind? Take your business a step forward with this feature of Instagram.

Using this feature, Instagram allows its users to add a shoppable tag to their story. This tag, when clicked by the enthusiastic users, takes them directly to the e-commerce site where they could go ahead and purchase the stuff.

With the intent to target the younger age group, this feature would allow the companies to make a market for themselves in an easier and better way. It is so simple that the companies need to just tag the products, get clicked on the tag and the user is redirected to the product page for shopping.

Archive Posts

Imagine deleting one of your posts, which you might have loved once, and regretting it later as you would now never be able to get it back with all those likes and comments on it.

But now it would be much simpler to just hide the post you do not need as of now by simply archiving it and when you need it you get it back from the archive as it was with all the likes intact.

In order to archive a post, you need to simply click on the three dots (…) on the right of the post and select Archive in place of delete. On archiving a post, it will no longer show in your profile.

All archived posts can be viewed in the archive folder. For bringing them back to your profile all you have to do is to select the “Show on profile” option in the menu which opens by clicking the three dots (…) on the right of the image.

Music Stickers in Stories

 Image Credit: Instagram Press

Be it videos or photos you post on Instagram, you can now add music to both with this new feature. Using this feature you can select your favorite music and apply it to your Instagram story.

Create stories and enhance them with the music sticker by clicking on them and adding a soundtrack that you feel is the best to fit the mood of the story. Add music to your stories and share them and have fun with all your followers.

Recommended Posts on Instagram

To make it easy for us to be able to find posts or stories of our taste, Instagram has started with this new feature of recommended posts.

In this feature, users are shown various posts or stories in that they would be interested in. This gives the users a new opportunity to explore and follow new brands or users.

Topic Channels in Explore Feature

In the explore feature of Instagram, you will now be able to explore various accounts or users you do not follow but might be interested in. This feature is enhanced by the addition of topic channels.

With topic channels, all the content (be it users, or various brands) is grouped based on personalized topics say fashion, games, beauty, sports, adventure, and so on.

With this feature, it is easier for brands as well as users to increase their discoverability on Instagram and to connect easily with prospective users.

Tracking Active Users

In chats, users can now notice a small green dot below their contact. This dot represents that the user is active on Instagram. This feature will help us connect to people easily as we would know when a particular user is active on Instagram.

On contrary, if you feel that you do not want to show people that you are currently active on Instagram, you can disable the settings. In order to disable the settings, you need to turn off the setting in the Activity Status option in the Instagram settings.

You can change this setting as per your choice.

Follow Hashtags

This is one of the best features added to Instagram. Users can now follow hashtags. Once you are following one hashtag, then people posting photos or feeds using that hashtag will be reflected in your home feed.

We can use this to follow a hashtag of a particular community or any hashtag in general. This gives us an illusion as to whether we are following that community or person when we are not following them actually. This becomes a great way to meet and follow new people.

Try These Interesting Instagram Features

With more and more advancements in various ways to connect via social media, one of the most sought-after ways is to connect via Instagram. Instagram is being successfully used by millions of users to connect on the social media platform. With each passing day, many new features are being added to the platform and it is still the fastest-growing social media platform.