By 
Instagram is easily one of my favorite apps around, but there’s still plenty the Facebook-owned social network can do to further improve the user experience. Instagram was late to the game after introducing Stories only last year and while the copycat feature turned out to be more popular than its Snapchat rival, it hasn’t really matched it in terms of features.
But Instagram isn’t resting on their laurels and has already begun testing new features that include several new enhancements for stories. Users could soon have the ability to search and post animated GIFs stickers inside of Stories, as well as the option to archive their favorite stories. Currently your only option for saving Stories is either directly to your device, or by posting it publicly to your page. Archiving lets users save memories to their account, without posting them on your page for all to see and mirrors Snapchat Memories.
Other general Instagram features include a repost button (making apps like Regram obsolete), the ability to follow specific hashtags, and native story sharing to WhatsApp which makes sense considering they recently added native sharing to Facebook Stories a few weeks ago.
Instagram is also still toying around with Close Friends (formerly “Favorites”), a feature we told you about back in June that allows you to share posts with a select group of people and not the general public. Privacy features like this have long been a staple on social networks like Facebook and Google+, so it’s high time Instagram finally get on the ball.
It’s worth noting that there’s no guarantee that any of these features will make it past the chopping block but it’s entirely possible we could see some, all, or even none launch in the near future. You’ll have to sign up for the Instagram beta on Android and iOS to take features like this for a spin, even then only a small group of users get to play around with fun new features like this.
via The Next Web
Comments