It looks like Instagram users might soon get some new options, including the ability to easily share others’ content within the app, the ability to use GIFs and search by GIFs, and the ability to send content only to a small circle of “closest friends.” Matt Navarra of The Next Web has more on these features, which are currently being tested with small groups of users:
TNW today obtained information on a range of new features Instagram is currently testing. As with all tests, this means some of you may have already seen one or two of the new features. Some of you, however, have not. Instagram and Facebook tend to roll out new features for testing to small segments of the audience, not all at once — and some may never been seen again after these tests.
As such, TNW makes no guarantee that any of these are coming to Instagram anytime soon. That said, we’re fairly confident at least a few of them will go live in the near future.
…Instagram appears to be finally working on a native Regram button. It’s a feature many users have been waiting for for some time. Currently, users wanting to reshare content have to either save the image or video to their device and re-share it from their own account, or call upon one of several third party apps like Regram, a popular Android option.
The screenshot above suggests a native option is coming soon, which is great… because third party apps are often insecure and awful.
…It looks like Instagram may finally join the GIF party and allow users to search for and add GIFs to their Stories or regular posts. We don’t have a lot of information about this — other than the test version being hideous — but it seems Instagram is tapping Giphy, like you do, to source GIFs in-app.
…Earlier this year, Instagram was spotted testing a favorite friends-type feature, a feature it now looks close to releasing. It’s exactly what it sounds like: add your closest friends to a select group and you can share content with just them — like DMs, but for people with more than one friend. It actually reminds us a lot of Myspace’s Top 8, which we can only hope we’re part of for you.
Navarra’s screenshot of the Regram option can be seen up top. Here’s his screenshot of the “favorite friends” feature:
And a video of the GIF search:
These features, and the other ones Navarra discusses (including a “Share to What’s App” button and a personal archive), seem to make quite a bit of sense. In particular, the “Regram” functionality seems like it could work well; users are already sharing others’ content, and this seems like a way to let them do that easily from within the app while still providing credit to the originator. We’ll see if and when these changes receive a wide rollout.
