News & Reviews:   Instagram

Instagram has once again enforced a new method to verify users' age. However, it uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and face scanning this time, and it's something it has never done before.

Instagram's Reels was previously seen as a TikTok rip-off, but users might care less about that now as the platform has witnessed a substantial growth. To bring an even better experience, Instagram has revealed a few new features, including bumping up the time limit to 90 seconds.

With waves of news about Amber Heard losing the court case against Johnny Depp, there is also other news regarding AMBER. And no, it's not the actress again but rather AMBER Alerts launching on Instagram. This new function will help people to see and share notices of missing children in their area.

These days, companies are really trying to take advantage of having non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in whichever platform they are having. Instagram is the latest player to join the bandwagon and it has begun testing NFTs.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is reportedly planning to introduce in-app tokens as the virtual currency for its Metaverse. In fact, according to a report by Financial Times, employees of the company already have a nickname for the currency: Zuck Bucks.

The in-app tokens would be centrally controlled by Meta and is similar in concept to the popular children’s game Roblox’s Robux currency. Previously, several sources claimed that Meta was planning to use cryptocurrency called Diem as its virtual currency.

Instagram yesterday announced that it is revamping the app by introducing ‘Favourites’ and ‘Following’, two new ways for your feed to behave. The good news is, regardless of which option you take, your feed will display posts in chronological order again!

Shared by the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri via a Meta blogpost yesterday, the change is part of the platform’s initiative to give users more choice and control over what they see in their feed. Furthermore, the change wants to make the time users spend on Instagram ‘feel more intentional’.

Meta Platforms chairman and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg yesterday confirmed that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are coming to Instagram soon. In fact, the Facebook founder said that Meta is currently working on doing just that and hopes that it would be accomplished ‘in the near term’.

This announcement comes as no surprise as Meta has previously announced its interest with NFTs. Earlier this year, Instagram top executive Adam Mosseri said that the company is ‘actively exploring’ NFTs and even made plans to add NFTs into its crypto wallet Novi.

It looks like Instagram has given up on its attempt to capture the long-form video market following the company’s move to kill off the IGTV standalone app. In an official blog post on Monday (28 February 2022), Instagram confirmed that it is discontinuing support for the IGTV app thus ending the service as a whole. RIP!

Instagram is rolling out a minor update that takes away Stories reactions from direct messages (DMs). It's said to declutter the DMs by relocating the reactions to the other corner.

Short videos have become a thing, but maybe too short isn't enough for a lot of people. There's a demand for slightly longer short videos, with TikTok allowing for uploads of up to 3 minutes last year. Instagram is also planning to expand the length of Instagram Reels soon.