The Latest on Instagram's Massive Ch-ch-changes
Instagram may have over one billion monthly active users, but they are down two founders.
On September 25th, Instagram’s CEO, Kevin Systrom, and CTO, Mike Krieger, announced they were leaving the company they launched eight years ago this month. No one knows exactly why, but most speculate it stems from them disagreeing with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook and ultimate owner of Instagram, over how the photo-sharing app was being run.
TCP has been sitting around keeping an eye on developments in order to plug you all in as we are admittedly a little worried about our favorite social media app. Thoughts were focused on which company would make the replacement and who the person in the role would be. Would it be an outside hire? Would it be a Zuck yes-man? Would this person ultimately change the app into something we absolutely hate?
Nine days later, we learned that Instagram’s Vice President of Product, Adam Mosseri, will take the reins as the new head of Instagram. Stay tuned to see what this means for the platform and all of its changes over the next few months.
In the meantime, here are a few new features and additional rumors to keep you busy:
Tag your favorites in videos
TCP has been waiting for the day where we can tag people in videos and “attach” it to their face, but this will do for now. When posting videos on Instagram, proceed to tag people on the same New Post screen you would tag people in a photo. The tag limit is 20, which is the same as the limit of tags in a regular picture. You can also go back and edit tags after the video is posted.
Add college/university information to your profile
While some do not have this option quite yet, many people are now able to add their higher education information in their profile. This area will be clickable for those in the network and reveal IG users by class year, major, student organizations, and more. This will be great for brands who target students for influencer campaigns.
#GoHeels
Slide in DMs with your favorite gif
If you are an avid Instagram user, there is no way you missed the ability to add gifs to your Instagram Direct messages. We have been spamming friends with them ever since the feature went live. The button is found in the message field where you would click to type and the gifs are sourced from GIPHY just like in Instagram Stories.
Additional shopping opportunities
Ready to blow more money in record time? Instagram will soon allow shoppable stickers in Stories that link to products like the ones we see in timelines. If you are ready to jump in, make sure you have a catalog created on your Facebook Page and that you sell a physical product. Instagram is also testing its own shopping channel on the Explore Page. Money move$.
The shopping stickers will look like current hashtag, mention, and location stickers.
Custom nametags
It seems like Instagram is trying to take a page out of Snapchat’s book or something…
Instagram profiles now have a Nametag feature that users can scan to automatically follow other users (think like QR codes). You can customize the background with a selfie, emojis, or different colors. Find it on the Explore page or in the top right-hand corner hamburger drawer.
Instagram Stories that are longer than 15 seconds
Speaking of Snapchat, it appears that Instagram will soon allow us to post longer Stories by splitting them into 15 second clips as the feature is currently live in India.
Hidden hashtags
Hashtags are big business on Instagram. With a max of 30 per piece of feed content, users post hashtags in order to be a part of a community, get discovered, and ultimately make the Explore Page. Instagram is now apparently working on a way to end the whole hashtags in captions vs. first comment debate for good by giving us the ability to add the hashtags and “hide” them before the post even goes live.
Geofenced content
Last but not least, it looks like Instagram may be testing the ability to geofence organic content to a certain area. This will be great for marketers who want to offer a discount in a certain area, but not to their entire audience! Hello localized promo codes!
Credit to @wongmjane via Techcrunch.
What do you think is next for Instagram? What new feature are you most looking forward to? Let us know below in the comments.