We are more than halfway through this year, and it has been one crazy ride so far. The world is in turmoil, and nothing seems to be the same anymore. Nobody is allowed to meet each other, go to the office daily, travel or leave the house. It is an introvert’s paradise right now. But the one constant thing in everyone’s life is Instagram updates. Instagram is known to assess the market needs very quickly and roll out updates to fill that gap before anyone else. Let us take a look at some of these updates Instagram provided this year.
Paid Badges on Instagram Live
The company is aware that a lot of the app’s promotion and increase in traffic is primarily because of the social media influencers or creators on the app. Brands try to collaborate with more influencers because they are the easiest way to divert the traffic towards IGTV. That’s why Instagram ensures that there are multiple ways for popular creators to earn on the social media platform. To keep these creators happy, invested, and motivated, Instagram came up with the idea of “badges.” These badges are offered by the creator to purchase during IGTV live stream, and the users who are in attendance can buy them.
Support Small Business
In May 2020, the users noticed a sticker named “Support Small Business” that they could add to their stories. This sticker lets users mention their brands without any fuss. It enabled people to directly view the brand account and all products it has to offer. All the brands mentioned with the sticker are displayed together in a shared story to support the growth of all small brands.
Monetized IGTV Ads
Instagram is known to pick up the basic ideas of other apps and rebrand it to make it their own. The company introduced IGTV to the users in 2018, and it was a bigger success than anticipated. The features of IGTV are similar to that of YouTube. To further the use of IGTV for money-making, Instagram will air short ads when the users begin to watch anyone’s Instagram TV video. the ads will be crisp, short, and mobile-friendly. This is similar to YouTube’s ad policy, as well. Since this is a new idea for them, they intend to experiment with different formats of ads all through this year to see what works the best with the audience.
Post Caption Shopping Tags
Instagram has come a long way in the field of on-platform shopping. They also went ahead to update the Instagram store for commercial purposes. But then the company decided there was more scope to it. The latest update in terms of business and brands is that their pages are allowed to mark their pictures and IG stories with a clickable tag. They intend to allow this feature on the accounts of social media influencers as well.
Share Live Videos to IGTV
Instagram initially allowed users to live stream on their stories, but the issue was that similar to the stories, those live streams were only visible for the next 24 hours, and then they vanished on their own. But then an update allowed everyone to save and share their live video via IGTV right after they stopped recording. It was useful because, previously, the live videos could be shared on stories only. Now, since the stories had a 15-second time frame, the 15-minute video had to be broken down into several stories. It was annoying to watch and hence lost potential engagement. But, IGTV lets you upload long videos so that users could upload the live video in its entirety.
Messenger Integration
Mark Zuckerberg established himself as a social media giant when he took over Instagram in 2012 and then WhatsApp in 2014. Naturally, it became easier for them to consider merging their chat boxes into one. In 2019, sources revealed that the company plans to merge the Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Message, and WhatsApp into one to allow smooth and flawless communication. The company did not start big with this move and took little steps towards it to ease in the customers and assess their reactions. A while back, users noticed an option to sync Messenger to their Instagram. The company has officially confirmed that they are conducting tests, but the final product is far from ready.
Instagram is a fun social media app that lets people share their moments with friends and family. The app initially only supported photo sharing, but now features like live videos, stories, messaging, long videos (IGTV) have been included as well. It is also popularly used by brands, famous people, and influencers to gain more recognition.
John Smith is a technology enthusiast who loves writing about new advancements and IT threats on a regular basis. Her work focuses on the latest advancements in the realm of technology, social media, and cyber security at norton.com/setup.
Source: Instagram Updates
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