Brace yourself! More Instagram changes are coming! The next confirmed upgrade that will happen on Insta is a new repost feature that will allow users to share content they like to their follower's feeds.
The new feature was spotted and made public via a screenshot posted on Social Media Expert Matt Navara’s Twitter.
The layout would suggest that a user will be able to repost content from other creators, which will appear on both their followers’ feeds and within the repost tab in its own grid that can be accessed on the user's profile. Similar to tagged photos.
While the new feature is yet to have its release date announced, a spokesperson from Meta confirmed via TechCrunch that it was in the works and being rolled out to a small audience:
“We’re exploring the ability to reshare posts in Feed — similar to how you can reshare in Stories — so people can share what resonates with them, and so original creators are credited for their work. We plan to test this soon with a small number of people.”
There has never been a feature that has allowed Instagram users to share other people’s content so easily to the feed, despite there being plenty of calls from the public to introduce it. There are a number of 3rd party apps that have been popular over the years that allow you to do this, but certainly nothing in-platform.
The thinking behind this one is fairly clear - it will give creators more opportunity to have their content shared and to be rightfully credited for anything they have created, as opposed to someone just using an app to download and pass off as their own.
The other positive (for Instagram at least), is that it will potentially bring some of the action back to the feed. By choosing to have this feature available for stories or direct messages only, the platform has taken a lot of the focus away from the main newsfeed, which is likely the most sticky part of the app.
The peculiar thing about this one is the timing. It has been very well documented that Instagram has faced a heap of backlash over the past few months around all the changes that they have been making to the platform. The overarching sentiment is that they are trying to become too much like TikTok by recommending too much content and not allowing users to see enough from the people they follow.
While they have rewound some of these changes to adhere to the public noise, the fact that they are moving ahead with another feature that encourages users to share content with their followers from creators they don't follow seems like a risky one. Even if users have been calling for this one for a while, the timing of release might just be its downfall.
The testing period is set to be rolled out to a small number of users in the coming months with no word on when/if it will be rolled out across the board.
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