Instagram changes you need to know about

Back in August, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced that ‘Instagram is no-longer a photo sharing app’. What is it, then? It’s clearly evolving into a video and commerce platform. 

Mosseri said that the company is looking to lean into broader entertainment and video offerings after seeing the success of competitors like TikTok and YouTube. Since then, we have seen more regular updates from Adam and the official Instagram Creators page, bringing exciting app developments across the full range of Instagram key features, including Stories, Reels, Feed posts, and Insights. 

Here’s a recap of some of the biggest changes to Instagram over the last few months: 

LINK STICKERS FOR ALL

One of the biggest gripes from influencers and brands was only being allowed links (aka. swipe-ups) in Stories once they had reached 10,000 followers. Let’s face it, a follower-count like that is no small feat, and can take years to achieve.

Allowing businesses and influencers of any sized following to embed links directly into their Stories could be a game changer for some.

60-SECOND STORIES 

Instagram is testing 60-second Stories, rather than breaking them up into 15-second segments. This change hasn’t been rolled out globally yet, but we expect to see it being tested into wider markets soon. 

DESKTOP PUBLISHING

Long been requested by social media managers, you can now post images and video of under 60 seconds from a desktop interface. 

With many brands and influencers editing content from their computers and laptops, this will remove the need to send to mobile for publishing to Instagram. Until now, you needed a third-party publishing platform to publish from desktop, which greatly complicated the process. 

INSIGHTS GETS NEW METRICS

Instagram has announced the addition of three new analytics metrics to Insights.

These new metrics will allow Creator and Business accounts to get an even better understanding of how their content performs on the platform. The new metrics are:

• Engaged audience This metric collects demographic data (including cities, countries, age and gender) relating to users who engage with your account and content, regardless of whether or not they are your followers.

• Reached audience This metric provides demographic insights (cities, countries, age, and gender) into all people reached over a period of time.

• Accounts engaged This metric will tell you how many accounts in total have interacted with your Instagram content over a period of time.

CO-AUTHOR POSTS AND REELS WITH COLLABS 

This new tool already seems to be getting a lot of use. It allows one piece of content to be shared by two user accounts, and included on both their feeds. That piece of content will then share a combined views figure. 

This is a great step forward for encouraging collaborative content and, like the new Reels effects above, seems to be an Instagram feature going squarely after matching TikTok functionality, in this case by aping that platform’s Duets.

IGTV KILLED OFF 

Instagram haven’t officially said that IGTV is being discontinued, but that they are merging it with feed video. 
The IGTV name has been dropped, and ​​will be replaced by a Video tab on the app. It’s clear that Instagram are now driving short-form content, but a dedicated place remains for longer-form storytelling.

COOL NEW REELS EFFECTS

Reels are all the rage on the platform right now, with some users seeing huge follower gains with them. Instagram is trying to catch up with TikTok for in-app effects and filters, and earlier this week they announced three great new, unsurprisingly music-focused, functions. 

• Superbeat. Superbeat automatically edits videos based on the background track that the user uses. This cool synching effect works great to high energy videos. 

• Dynamic Lyrics. This effect automatically adds song lyrics to a Reel, creating a karaoke-style video aesthetic. 

• 3D Lyrics. This is the same as dynamic lyrics, but in 3D.