Instagram Said To Be Working On A New Resharing Feature

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Instagram is reportedly testing a new feature that will allow users to reshare posts from other accounts to their own feed. According to The Verge, the new feature to repost Instagram photos and other posts is now in the early stages of development.

How users can repost Instagram photos

According to The Verge, this new feature is referred to internally as “seamless sharing.” The feature will appear in the settings menu for individual posts. The Instagram repost feature is expected to work similarly to Twitter’s retweet feature. Posts can be reshared at least twice, and reshared posts will appear below the name and photo of the user who shared them.

The feature to repost Instagram photos and other posts is still in the early development phase, and there is no information on when it will be released publicly. However, the report notes that the feature might be rolled out to business users first, considering that the chances of spreading misinformation via reposts is probably lower than it is with posts from the general public.

The photo-sharing app has introduced features to businesses first in the past, like scheduled posting and multiple uploads. The Verge also managed to obtain two screenshots of the new resharing feature. One of the screenshots appears to show a business account offering merchandise for sale.

Earlier this year, the photo-sharing app added a feature which allowed users with public accounts to reshare public Stories. Users were even allowed to repost Instagram photos and videos if they were included in the Stories. Users were able to repost Instagram photos and videos either to their own story or when others mention them.

Instagram has been focusing more and more on Stories, which has been immensely successful since its launch. Currently, the Stories feature boasts 400 million daily active users, more than double Snapchat’s overall user base of 188 million. Snapchat was the first to come up with the Stories concept, but later Facebook copied it to many of its major apps.

Is the resharing feature really coming?

An Instagram feature to reshare posts has long been resisted by company executives, but allowing users to repost Instagram photos and other posts could help boost traffic on the platform. Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger told Wired last year that the idea of a resharing feature had been under discussion internally.

“Instagram is full of awesome stuff. In fact, one of the main ways people communicate over Instagram Direct now is actually they share content that they find on Instagram. So that’s been a debate over and over again,” the Instagram co-founders said.

However, Krieger told Bloomberg earlier this year, “It would make people feel like the content in their feed was not what they had chosen.”

Giving users a quick way to repost could also boost the amount of fake news being distributed on the platform, which we have already seen with Facebook and Twitter.

It appears the internal discussions at Instagram eventually went in favor of launching a resharing feature. However, The Verge adds that the feature is currently in a very early stage and could even be scrapped before release. Additionally, it seems Instagram itself isn’t even ready to admit officially that the feature is in the works. A spokesperson for the company reportedly told Mashable that they are not currently developing or testing such a feature, denying The Verge’s claims.

Other possible upcoming features

In addition to the reposting feature, the photo-sharing app is also reportedly working on these: geofenced sharing, stories highlight stickers, quiz stickers, and separating hashtags from captions.

The option to separate hashtags from captions could also address an irritating issue which causes hashtags to be stashed at the bottom of a post. This new feature was spotted by tipster and mobile researcher Jane Manchun Wong in Instagram’s Android app. The app included a new button called “Add Hashtags,” which would allow users to add hashtags without using them in the caption.

She also spotted a feature that would allow users to select the locations where users can view a particular post or story. Additionally, Wong observed a feature that would enable users to share other accounts’ Stories Highlights as a sticker in their own story. Instagram has confirmed the existence of this feature but said it only supports public highlights or users’ own highlights, according to Mashable.

Instagram is also reported to be working on adding quiz stickers to stories. The feature would give followers three options to select from.

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