No, it’s not a “regram” option. Sorry! But today, Instagram is officially launching a new feature that will allow users to re-share someone’s Instagram post with their friends via Instagram Stories – something it confirmed was in testing earlier this year. The idea with the new re-sharing option is to give users a way to add their own commentary or react to a post, without repurposing it as their own – the way a regram (reposting to feed) feature would have permitted.
For example, you can now re-share something you saw posted by a brand or influencer on Instagram that you like, or add your own comments on top of a funny meme, or even tag a friend on a post you want them to see.
Sarah Perez
I think I may have finally found a way to use Stories on Instagram: sharing photos I like from my stream to my Story, effectively curating a feed of my favorite images. I’m actually quite impressed with the novel solution Instagram found: this way, what I share from others stays separate from what I post to my profile – which in my case are exclusively photos taken by me.
The sharing process is a bit awkward: click on the ‘share’ icon below a photo, then tap on ‘Add Post to your Story’; but when you’re finished you need to dismiss this menu manually. The stickers available to customize the story are quite nice as well: by default, the colors from the photo edges bleed into the story background, creating a beautiful backdrop; you can also pick colors from the photo to use for text (as for the font, I only use ‘Modern’); if you tap the shared post it toggles a white border around it, revealing the caption of the original post.
I find it impressive how quickly Instagram manages to roll out new features. Apart from the major announcements in June of IGTV and video chat, some smaller features have been released on iOS that were being tested for a while. Just a couple of weeks ago I’ve noticed a new ‘Close Friends’ list. But it seems to apply only when sharing stories, not for regular posts. Personally I find this somewhat redundant; since I only share public posts from other accounts, I see no reason to share some photos specifically with a closed list of friends instead of all my followers.
Another recent addition is the ability to mute people completely, not only their stories. Even though no one is likely to admit to using it, it should prove useful for those few people freshly arrived from Facebook who spam their followers with hundreds of photos from their holidays instead of carefully selecting the best.
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