Instagram

It’s been a whole year since Instagram rolled out its Snapchat-cloned Stories feature that lets users share ephemeral photos and videos on the service, and today Instagram has shared new data on Stories changing user engagement.

Earlier this summer Instagram shared that its Stories feature has 250 million users. Now Instagram says Stories has also helped increase the amount of time users spend in the app.

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Instagram is introducing a new tool to automatically block offensive comments from photos and videos users post as well as live video broadcasts. Instagram is also using machine learning to automatically block what can be determined as spam in comments.

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Instagram’s Explore tab already features search and discovery for finding new photos and videos on the service, and now the social network is introducing new location and hashtag stories.

The new location stories will appear when you’re near that current location and other Instagram users are posting with the format and tagging location. Hashtag stories will appear from search results and include stories that use specific hashtag stickers.

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Instagram has started rolling out a new feature called “archive” that offers users an alternative when deciding whether or not to delete a post. Users delete their posts for a variety of reasons, such as if they don’t receive enough likes in a certain amount of time, and Instagram views this new archive capability as an alternative to that…

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Instagram is rolling out a new Snapchat-like AR feature today called face filters. These work with both the photo and video camera to apply real-time face-tracking filters over subjects.

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Instagram has updated its mobile site with the ability to post photos without using the app, TechCrunch reports. While the move is intended to make sharing to Instagram easier in markets with slow network speeds by eliminating the need to download the Instagram app, the new feature also extends to the web version of Instagram on the iPad…

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Instagram has become quite competitive lately with new features that take on Snapchat directly, and now the social network has shared that it has 700 million users which is a new milestone. Instagram made the announcement in a blog post this morning:

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Instagram is rolling out an update today that adds new features for stickers in both Stories and Direct messaging. The new features include more custom geostickers for cities, a new selfie sticker, and a “sticker pinning” feature that gives you more options for adding stickers to videos.

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An update to Instagram coming today aims to improve the service’s Direct messaging feature by combining disappearing photos and videos with text conversations into a single thread. Previously the features were separated, with disappearing photos and videos in their own conversation separate from text chats, meaning that you could have multiple threads going with the same person(s) within Direct.

Today’s update hopes to streamline your inbox within Direct by making the disappearing photos and videos appear inline within text conversations when it’s the same contact(s):

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In a post on its official blog this afternoon, Instagram announced that two-factor authentication is now live for all users. The update was part of a wide-ranging announcement from the company, which focused on “fostering a safer, kinder community.”

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Taking advantage of Instagram’s new carousel album feature, Swipeable for iOS allows users to easily share panoramic and 360° photos on their Instagram accounts. Created by the developer Holumino Limited who also offers the Spincle – 360 Degrees Camera app, Swipeable is a free download from the App Store.

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Instagram has steadily been introducing new features to its photo and video sharing service, and that appears to be paying off. TechCrunch reports that Instagram has shared it now has 1 million monthly active advertisers, up from half that in September and just 200,000 a year ago.

Instagram’s user base includes 400 million daily active users with 80 percent of all users following a business, the report adds, and Instagram plans to leverage that with new features.

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Instagram today has announced a new update for its iOS and Android apps. The update comes not long after the social network added support for geostickers to its Stories feature. Today’s update, however, relates to live video and adds support for downloading live videos once the broadcast has ended…

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As it continues to play catch up to Snapchat, Instagram today updated its Stories feature with support for geostickers, a capability that Snapchat has supported for a while now and is arguably one of its most unique features.

At this point, Instagram’s geofilters aren’t nearly as widespread as Snapchat’s, but presumably that will change as time progresses…

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Instagram is introducing a new sharing format that lets you publish multiple photos and videos in a single post on the social network. Posts were previously limited to single photos or videos with the exception of Stories which are ephemeral.

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