Heena Sharma Blog

  Facebook is on a huge monetisation drive and now, Instagram users globally will see ads in short-video feature Reels from Friday. The ads will be full-screen, looping and up to 30-second long and will appear in between other clips, reports The Verge. Ads will be identified by a small "sponsored" tag below the name of the advertiser's account. Instagram started testing ads in India, Australia, Brazil and Germany in April and is now rolling those out globally. Ads can run up to 30 seconds and users can interact with them the way they would with organic posts (including skipping them altogether). Ads can also include "shop now" buttons, according to screenshots shared by the company. Facebook is also experimenting with a new ad format for Stories called sticker ads. Read More

  Facebook-owned Instagram has announced to let users add up to four pronouns to their profiles, which they can then display publicly or only to their followers. It's another way to express yourself on Instagram and the feature is now available in a few countries today with plans for more. The company, however, did not specify which countries have this feature at the moment. "Now you can add pronouns to your profile with a new field. It's another way to express yourself on Instagram and we've seen a lot of people adding pronouns already, so hopefully this makes it even easier. Available in a few countries today with plans for more," said Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram. People can fill out a form to have a pronoun added, if it's not already available, or just add it to their bio. The news comes at a time when a coalition of 44 US Attorneys General has signed a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging Facebook not to launch "Instagram...

  Facebook has removed 26.9 million pieces of hate speech content in the fourth quarter of 2020 -- up from 22.1 million in Q3 and the company gives credit to improvements in its automated systems that catch and purge such comments. The social network also blocked 6.4 million pieces of organised hate content in the October-December period from its main platform, up from 4 million in Q3. Instagram also saw significant jumps in hate speech, bullying and self-harm removals, according to the company's 'Community Standards Enforcement Report'. Facebook took down 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassment content from its platform in the fourth quarter of 2020 -- up from 3.5 million in Q3. "Last quarter, we shared the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook for the first time to show the percentage of times people see this type of content on our platform. This quarter, hate speech prevalence dropped, seven to eight views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of con...

  Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is making changes to its algorithm to get more original posts on its platform. With the help of algorithm, Reels that are mostly covered by text, are blurry, have a watermark or logo, or have a border around it won't be recommended as frequently. Instagram user surveys demonstrated that people have a "less satisfying" Reels experience when content is recycled from other apps or is blurry, so it'll start deemphasizing that content in its recommendation software, said Devi Narasimhan, Spokesperson, Instagram. The company is also issuing new best practices on its @creators account to give Instagram users tips on how to make content that's likely to be seen and promoted, The Verge reported on Tuesday. According to the report, the team now recommends that Reels users post vertical videos that use music found in Instagram's library or sounds that they find on Reels. Read More

  Facebook-owned Instagram is now working on new vertical feed for Stories, the way TikTok first used and Reels on Instagram has already cloned the feature. According to a TechCrunch report, navigating with vertical swipes up and down would make Stories experience more like Reels, recently launched by Facebook to compete with the Chinese short-video making app. Vertical swiping feels more natural than taps and horizontal flicks, the way we do on smartphones and other apps. The "Vertical Stories" feature on Instagram was spotted by Alessandro Paluzzi who shared the discovery on his Twitter account. "Now you can swipe up and down to browse stories". The feature is not live yet. Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday that the feature is being developed but is not available for the public at the moment. Read More

  Snap Inc on Monday rolled out a feature, " Spotlight ", that would allow users to share short-form videos publicly in its Snapchat app, adding a service that would compete with ByteDance-owned TikTok and Instagram Reels. Users, who could previously share snaps or stories with friends, can now share them directly to Spotlight and garner more followers, Snap said in a blog post https://press.snap.com/introducing-spotlight. The company said it would give about $1 million every day throughout the remainder of 2020 to users whose snaps make it to the top of the platform, in a bid to boost engagement with the feature. Facebook Inc earlier this year launched Instagram Reels - the company's version of TikTok wherein users can record short mobile-friendly videos, then add special effects and soundtracks pulled from a music library. Read More      

  Instagram users in select countries will now be able to search the platform using keywords and no hashtags are required. The Facebook-owned company said the keyword search feature will initially be available in English in six countries, including the UK, the US, Ireland and Canada. "The search is limited to general interest topics and keywords that are within Instagram's community guidelines," the company was quoted as saying in media reports on Tuesday. Instagram also announced to expand Guides to everyone -- to make it easier to find, curate and share the products, places and posts people love from their favourite accounts. The users can find Guides on Profile, and share them across Stories and in direct messages (DMs). Read More  

  Irish privacy regulators have opened two investigations into Instagram over the social media site's handling of young people's personal data. Ireland's Data Protection Commission said it launched the investigations in September after receiving complaints about the company. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it's in close contact with the commission and is "cooperating with their inquiries. The investigations were first reported late Sunday by Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, which said they came after a US data scientist aired concerns that Instagram made public the email addresses and phone numbers of people under 18. The minimum age to use Instagram is 13. Data scientist David Stier said last year that his analysis found users, including those under 18, who switched their account types to business accounts also had their contact information displayed on their profile. Users were apparently switching to business accounts in order to see statisti...

  Instagram Reels is getting new features, including extended recording time limit of up to 30 seconds, ability to extend the timer to 10 seconds while recording, and an option to trim and delete clip from the timeline. Launched in India in July this year, Reels is a short-video service from Instagram that lets user create and share short-videos with their followers on their Instagram Feed. How to create Instagram Reels Tap on Reels icon available at the bottom of the Instagram app to get into camera recording and editing mode. There is a variety of creative editing tools available to process the recorded video before publishing. Here are some of the features and tools available: Audio: Search for a song from the Instagram music library for your reel. You can also use your own original audio by simply recording a reel with it. AR Effects: Select one of the many effects in our AR library, created by both Instagram, and creators all over the world, to record multiple clips...

  A newly-discovered patent filing suggests that Facebook-owned photo sharing platform Instagram may be considering charging a fee to add links to photo captions. The patent application shows a pop-up appearing when the user adds a URL to a caption, asking if the user wants to pay $2 to make the link live, reports The Verge. "If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a link," the patent application read. However, if Instagram were to implement this feature, it would raise the question of whether people would want to pay $2 per link. Meanwhile, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a blog post last week that they have been reviewing the way the photo-sharing platform verifies accounts for the past two months and as a result of which, they have made changes to the verification process. Read More

  In a fresh bid to allow cross-messaging among its family of apps, Facebook has reportedly started merging Instagram and Messenger chats. First spotted by The Verge, the update is for both iOS and Android devices. The update comes with the message: "There's a New Way to Message on Instagram". "Once you hit the update, the regular DM icon in the top right of Instagram is replaced by the Facebook Messenger logo," the report mentioned. Currently, the functionality to message Facebook users from Instagram is not possible. Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion. In another step to integrate its family of apps that are being used by 3.14 billion users globally, Facebook has also integrated Messenger rooms with WhatsApp on the Web. Read More               

Facebook-owned Instagram said on Wednesday it would begin testing in India its Reels feature as it seeks to replace TikTok, the wildly popular short video service the government banned more than a week ago along with 58 other Chinese apps. Reels, which comes to India after being tested in Brazil, Germany and France, offers a new way to create and share short videos on Instagram. Users can record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects and new creative tools on Reels. They can share the videos with their followers on their Instagram Feed and if they have a public account, make their 'reels' available to the wider Instagram community through the platform's Explore feature. Reels will start rolling out to users in India from 7:30 pm on Wednesday and will have content from a diverse set of public figures and creators, such as Ammy Virk, Gippy Grewal, Komal Pandey, Arjun Kanungo, Jahnavi Dasetty aka Mahathalli, Indrani Biswas aka Wondermunna, Kusha Kapil...

Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram has rolled out the pinned comment feature to help users maximise engagement. The new feature will help users to pin on the top important or favourite comments on their posts, said the company. "We're rolling out pinned comments everywhere. That means you can a pin a few comments to the top of your feed post and better manage the conversation," the company said in a tweet on Tuesday. Instagram started testing pinned comments in May alongside its comment filtering tools. One can pin up to three comments to the top of the post at a time, all of which will appear right underneath your photo with a "Pinned" label underneath it. Read More

Saregama on Wednesday announced a global deal with Facebook, to license its music for video and other social experiences across Facebook and Instagram . With this partnership, users will soon be able to use Saregama’s music on videos, stories (via music stickers) and other creative content on Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, Facebook users will also be able to add songs to their profile. Saregama is India’s oldest music label with a music catalogue of over 100,000 songs across different genres, including film songs, devotional music, ghazals and indipop in more than 25 languages. Commenting on the partnership, Vikram Mehra, Managing Director of Saregama India said “We are pleased with this partnership as now millions of Facebook users will be able to add music from our vast catalogue to stories and videos they create and share.” Read More

Facebook-owned photos and videos sharing platform Instagram is rolling out new tools for content creators to place ads on IGTV videos . Instagram will share at least 55 per cent of the revenue from these ads with creators, which would motivate more influencers to create material for IGTV. To begin with, the ads will only appear when people click to watch IGTV videos from previews in their feed, and the initial round of ads will be vertical videos up to 15 seconds long. "Starting next week, we are introducing ads in IGTV, our long-form video destination. We want to support creators' investment in IGTV by sharing advertising revenue with them," Instagram said in a statement. Read More

Facebook-owned Instagram on Saturday introduced three new options to share Boomerang Stories: SlowMo, Echo, and Duo, along with a new few feature to trim their length. "Your Instagram camera gives you ways to express yourself and easily share what you're doing, thinking or feeling with your friends. Boomerang is an iconic part of that, and one of the most beloved camera formats. Instagram is excited to expand on the creativity and give you new ways to use Boomerang to turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected," the company said in a statement. The new filters are available in the Boomerang composer located in the Instagram Stories camera. With SlowMo, as the name suggests, Boomerang videos are slowed to half their original speed. Echo creates a double vision effect, enhancing Boomerang and Duo, both speeds up and slows down Boomerang, adding a texturized effect. It's also possible to trim and adjust the length of recorded Boomerangs with t...

Instagram has said that it would require new users to verify they are at least 13 when they join the visually focused, Facebook-owned social network. The move aims to help Instagram comply with a US law and its own policies that require any user to be at least 13. "Asking for this information will help prevent underage people from joining Instagram, help us keep young people safer and enable more age-appropriate experiences overall," an Instagram blog said. The company said the age information would not be visible to others but would help in creating "age-appropriate and safer experiences" on the social network with more than a billion users. It was not immediately clear how Instagram would protect against young people providing false information, which has been a persistent issue for social media. The announcement came a day after a TechCrunch article which noted that Instagram did not follow the example of most of its social media peers in checking...

Facebook has launched a new payments system that will work across its app ecosystem -- Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Appropriately named Facebook Pay , it will begin rolling out on Facebook and Messenger this week in the US for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, person-to-person payments on Messenger and purchases from select Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace. "Over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp," Deborah Liu, Vice President, Marketplace and Commerce at Facebook, said in a statement late Tuesday. Facebook Pay supports most major credit and debit cards as well as PayPal. The social media giant said Facebook Pay is built on existing financial infrastructure and partnerships, and is separate from the Calibra wallet which will run on the Libra network, the company's digital currency. You can start using Facebook Pay on Facebook or Messenger wi...

Expanding its fact-checking programme, Facebook has started allowing Instagram users to flag false content on the photo-and video-sharing platform. "I'm proud that, starting today, people can let us know if they see posts on Instagram they believe may be false. There's still more to do to stop the spread of misinformation, more to come," Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, said in a tweet on Thursday. According to a report in Poynter.org, while the roll out of the feature has started in the US, it should be available for all international users in about two weeks. Fact checkers will review the posts once users flag content as false. But even if fact checkers flag those content as false, the posts would not be deleted from the platform, said the report. Such posts will be downplayed on "explore" and "hashtag" pages, Stephanie Otway, an Instagram spokesperson, was quoted as saying. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

Instagram is running a social media experiment in Australia and elsewhere to see what happens when it hides the number of likes on photos and other posts. If you have an Instagram account, you’ll get to see the numbers but your followers won’t – at least, not automatically. They will be able to click and see who liked your post, but will have to count the list of names themselves. The trial is taking place right now in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. Canada has just finished its trial. It’s a bold move by Instagram, but arguably a necessary one. There is growing concern about the effect of social media on young people’s mental health and self–esteem. Instagram explained: We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get. Likes, and their public tallying, have become the heart of Instagram and many other social media platforms. By hiding them, does Instagram risk devaluing a c...