Instagram’s Candid Stories still prompts users once a day and includes a timestamp so friends know when you posted. Unlike BeReal, however, users can enhance their daily posts with text or squiggles, and can opt out of the daily alert whenever they would like. (They also aren’t marked tardy.) Instagram previously enabled the dual-camera function, which simultaneously uses front and back lenses.
The new features are intended to give users more ways to engage with people they know, says Tessa Lyons-Laing, director of product management at Instagram.
Notes—the only announced feature now hitting the app—lets users share their thoughts in a 60-character text post with close friends or people who follow them back. The note appears at the top of recipients’ inboxes and invites them to respond before it disappears in 24 hours.
Cordilia James
Barely a week after reports that Meta employees were brainstorming how to build the next Twitter, one of the proposed features called Instagram Notes is seemingly ready for public rollout!
I have yet to see this update on my Instagram account, but from the description and screenshot in the article this barely qualifies as a Twitter clone, let alone a viable alternative. The 60-character limit is irrelevant; the target audience and ephemerality though are what makes this feature almost completely opposite Twitter. While Twitter has private accounts, the majority of activity is public and permanent – at least in theory, if we don’t count people deleting previous tweets to curate their online history or tweets removed or hidden by moderation. These qualities have facilitated Twitter’s best and worst aspects, from the virality of breaking news to shaming and ‘cancelling’ over long-forgotten tweets. Instagram Notes more closely resembles status messages in old desktop chat apps like Yahoo! Messenger, and as such it will at most contribute to the growing feature overload of Instagram.
Post a Comment