Instagram is one of the leading social networks today and, to stay on the podium, it must be constantly renewed. Here are some of the new features that this social network has incorporated in recent weeks.
Design:
Design is important for any brand. It says a lot about the essence and the values it wants to transmit, as well as the company's capacity for renewal. In the case of Instagram, small changes to the logo or the application's interface are frequent. In this case, the renewal of style is in the colours and the font.
Instagram has launched a new font available in stories called Instagram Sans, which according to the company's own words, is inspired by the logo and other strokes and fonts of the application.
The logo has also undergone a slight change. Instagram has generated a new logo with a 3D background (gradient) and in movement, the aim being that the movement of the tones gives the sensation of brightness.
Graffica
With all these updates, which might seem small, the aim is to increase the users' ability to express themselves. Among other small changes is the improvement of the centralisation of images in posts.
AMBER Alerts:
When we think of a social network the idea of a union of people developing together in society, sharing and helping each other comes to mind. Perhaps this is a little far removed from what are currently applications like twitter, facebook or instagram, very centralised in their evolution in digital marketplaces.
However, updates like AMBER bring us a little closer to that original idea. It is a function created to find missing children. It has been part of Facebook since 2015 and since 1 June 2022 it has also been part of Instagram. It was created in collaboration with police authorities, associations and child search organisations, who came to the conclusion that the dissemination of images is fundamental to finding missing children.
AMBER alerts are activated when your location is accessible, and therefore, they can locate your position. If you are in an area where a child has recently been reported missing, a notification will appear in your feed, as if it were a friend's post. The post will include photos of the child in question, as well as essential data such as their name, age or the clothes they were last seen wearing. Previous cases on other social networks have produced sufficiently effective results for Instagram to decide to incorporate them as well.
These notifications, as we said, will only appear on your account if you have your location activated and you are within the determined area, which will not be too extensive, just the immediate territory of the disappearance and some surrounding areas. And it will only be available, for the moment, in 25 countries (among which Spain is not included) but the United States, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Korea and Jamaica.
Control of sensitive content:
Control over sensitive content was first launched last year, but is now updated to further personalise the experience on the social network. Control over sensitive content is based on controlling how much sensitive content we want to see. Previously there was already the possibility of preventing this type of publications with a warning message in the Explore section and the Feed, but now it is extended to Reels, Hashtahgs, suggestions and recommendations .
by accessing the settings, in the account section and then clicking on the sensitive content control, three options appear. Each of them corresponds to a level of sensitivity, i.e. how sensitive these images have to be for your account to display the warning message before showing the image. These three states are "More", "Standard" or "Less" depending on whether we want to limit more or fewer publications.
In short, the idea is to personalise the experience while maintaining freedom of expression for all users. Snapshots or videos of operations, wounds, blood, massacres or mistreated animals, among others, are susceptible to being classified as sensitive content. In this case, the update is available to all users, regardless of the country.
Suggestions:
Instagram started working on suggesting other accounts with common themes or followers some time ago. For example, it added suggestions of similar accounts under the profile of a person you were looking for. However, now those recommendations have become automatic and in the Feed. In fact, they are usually placed among the first posts.
The app recommends a post (image, reel, carousel) from an account that is related to another account you have interacted with. However, on the right-hand side you can adjust the appearance of these new features. There is the option to no longer show suggestions related to the account that has linked to a post, to no longer show posts from the account that has been shown, or to remove suggestions from other accounts that might be of interest.
In essence, Instagram's algorithm aims to connect accounts, and while it previously let accounts find each other spontaneously, it now studies users' movements and the content of profiles in order to create new relationships between users.
