Instagram is getting several new features that pull from competitors, and it’s updating a controversial feature that it added earlier this year.
Starting today, users will have the ability to repost public Reels and grid posts from other accounts. And similar to TikTok, reposts will be collected in a designated tab on your profile and sprinkled into the feeds of people who follow you. It’s a small but meaningful shift from how Instagram currently operates: until now, the most efficient way to share other users’ content was to repost it on your Instagram Story. Now, you can essentially reblog it.
Instagram is also pulling from Snapchat and adding an opt-in location map that lives in your private messages. The map shows the last active location for friends who have opted in to the feature; it also pulls content from specific locations, such as a music festival, where many people are posting from. It’s the Snap Map but redesigned for Instagram.
Finally, Instagram is updating its existing feature that shows what Reels content friends have interacted with — an addition some people didn’t like when it was first announced. The tab is reminiscent of the long-dead “activity” tab that showed what posts your friends were interacting with. When the new Reels-focused tab was introduced in the US in January, there were concerns about the ability to opt out of having your interactions broadcast to everyone who follows you. Now, this tab will be available globally but with increased controls: you can hide your likes and reposts from showing up, and also mute other users’ interactions if they’re not interesting to you.
All of these incremental changes touch on larger complaints that Instagram users have had for years as the platform moved away from its original function of sharing your photos with your friends and family. As Instagram pumps the platform with Reels to compete with TikTok, photos from accounts you follow have become less and less visible on the main feed. The profile page is relatively irrelevant compared to what it once was as recommendations-based scrolling became the norm — and reposts may intensify this shift. Creators often complain about their inability to reach their followers, and as Instagram has added new feature after new feature, for some users, it has felt like bloat that nobody asked for. Will a Snap Map-like addition make the platform more compelling? Perhaps for some. But it’s unlikely to satisfy creators who built a following on a version of Instagram that no longer exists.
