New Year, new updates. Gotta hand it to the Instagram team, although most of their recent changes appear to be taken from TikTok [*cough* copycats *cough*] they’re definitely on a mission to continue to enhance the platform’s experience.
Here’s three updates you can expect Instagram to be rolling out pretty soon …
New countdown feature
We absolutely love using the countdown feature for our clients across a range of industries from eComm to service-based professionals. With a busy little platform like Instagram, adding a countdown feature is a bluddy nice way to reduce your followers’ mental loads … as well as reminding them to circle back to that exciting THING you have them counting down to [FYI? This feature is only trickling out across various accounts as we speak].
You simply click on ‘add reminder’ when posting your post [FYI? We imagine it’ll be a manual inclusion so far, and not something you can auto-schedule]. Once you’ve added the reminder, your followers have the option to opt-in and go on the countdown journey with you [nothing beats having something automated that reminds people to circle back to your static content, eh?!].
Rearranging posts on your profile
Ever scroll through your feed and wish you’d had magic powers to go back in time and re-order when your posts went out? Can relate. Well, we both might be in luck because Instagram is currently testing an option that will allow you to be able to re-jig the order your posts are shown on your feed.
There’s also talks of a possible ‘pinned post’ option for profiles, something you might have seen over on TikTok.
But let’s not get TOO excited. Instagram hasn’t confirmed if this will definitely go ahead. Like we said, it’s in its testing stages but if they do decide to give it the green light, we should expect to see it being rolled out to all accounts within the next couple of months. Post from 8 months ago that didn’t match the rest of the colour scheme that week? You better watch yo’self.
Vertical Stories view
What’s that? Another TikTok copycat move? Instagram is copying their cooler younger sibling yet again. This time it’s the browsing experience. Y’know how on TikTok you flick upwards to see another view? Expect the Stories experience to be like this very soon.
This new format will let users swipe up to skip through different users stories which explains why we recently said goodbye to the swipe up links that were replaced by [fugly] link stickers last year.
IG are yet to confirm when it’s going to be available but as soon as we get word, we’ll be sure to letcha know on our [future] Vertical view Instagram Stories.
Which update are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments!
