Instagram is undoubtedly one of the biggest social media platforms today. As per reports, by the end of December 2021, Instagram has registered around 2 billion users. What keeps people engaged in this social network is the constant effort from the Instagram team to make the app better each day. New features keep adding up, old ones keep getting better, and Instagram ensures to make the user experience as good as possible. In this article, we will be going through 4 significant changes that Instagram announced this year and analyzing how these changes would benefit you as an individual or a brand.  

  • Adding Subscriptions  

Recently, Instagram announced that they would be closing down IGTV ads which was a blow for many content creators. Instagram has proven to be a valuable asset for influencers and brands worldwide. It has helped them earn money through posts, collaboration, popularity, etc. The launch of IGTV did wonders for some creators as it allowed placing ads in short-length video clips.  

Instagram announced an even better alternative, soon you will be able to subscribe to your favorite accounts and influencers. Subscribers would have access to exclusive content depending on the category. The creators, in return, would be charging a monthly subscription fee. This feature makes sure that accounts are subscribed based on the quality of content rather than solely on the number of followers. Subscriptions will provide access to the following.  

  • Story Subscriptions: If you are a subscriber, then a purple ring will be visible around your profile picture in the story panel. This would indicate that the story is exclusive to subscribers only.  
  • Live Subscriptions: Some live videos hosted by content creators will also be solely for their subscribers.  
  • Subscriptions badges: Subscribers will have a unique purple batch to make them stand out from regular Instagram followers. Creators would be able to easily differentiate the subscriber’s comments from regular followers’ comments.
  • Subscription batches will help create a strong bond between you and your loyal audience., this would lead them to your post more often, increasing like counts. You can buy Instagram likes (UK) for startups to get a little boost.  
  1. Enhanced Tags  
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Instagram is a content-driven platform, so creators collaborate with different teams and influencers to bring the best posts to their viewers. However, teams that work “behind the scenes” get little to no recognition for their efforts.   

Instagram recently confirmed adding new enhanced tags to make sure that proper credit is given to each team member involved in managing an account. This would help people to get to know about the team working in the background on an Instagram account.  

You can take the following steps to add an enhanced tag.  

  • Create a new Post and tap Next.  
  • Make edits as per your liking and tap Next  
  • After you have typed your caption, tap Tag People  
  • Select the Add Tag option then search and select your contributors  
  • Tap Show Profile Category to display the creator category  
  • Click done and Share.  
  1. Controlling the order of your feed  

As an Instagram user, you would always wonder why you see some posts on your profile. The algorithm for posts appearing in our feed has always been a mystery. This year Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, announced a great feature that would let you decide what type of posts you want to see first. He said that the feature was added to improve user experience as well as to allow the users to have more control over the posts that they want to see.   

The option would be available on the home feed at the application’s top. You can choose from three different categories.  

  1. Favorites: Selecting this category would show you posts from only those accounts that you have marked as favorites. If you open Instagram solely to view posts from your favorite Instagram accounts, this category might be perfect for you.   
  2. Following: This option portrays posts in an orderly manner based on the accounts or hashtags that you are following. This is the same algorithm used in old social media applications.  
  3. Home: If you are satisfied with how posts are shown to you, you can stick with the home category. It shows posts based on your interests and according to the posts that you most often love to see and like.
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   4) Instagram Reels  

Instagram reels have been doing great ever since their launch back in 2020. Reels are small videos that would appear vertically on a full screen to the user, and they last for around 15 seconds to a maximum of one minute. Instagram has been working on updating reels frequently. New updates that were recently added to reels are below.  

  • Double Exposure: This feature lets you take a picture first, and then record your reel/video on top of it.  
  • Timer: Timers are essential in terms of video making, which is why Instagram has now added a timer to reels so that you don’t have to keep holding your phone to shoot one.  

Conclusion  

Instagram is very proactive when it comes to making the user experience better. This is one of the main reasons for its rapid growth each year. Though Instagram keeps updating and testing new features, the ones mentioned above are popular these days. They will help Instagram users portray their creativity more effectively.   Right now there are many new updates but we believe that many more are yet to come in the coming days. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed because we know that new updates would bring positive changes to the interface of Instagram.

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