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Instagram Direct one-ups Snapchat with replay privacy controls
Messaging is the heart of Snapchat, so after cloning and augmenting Stories, Instagram is hoping to boost intimate usage of Direct with privacy controls not found elsewhere. Now when you send an ephemeral photo or video from the Instagram Direct camera, you can decide whether recipients can only view it once, replay it temporarily or see a permanent thumbnail in the chat log. Read More
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Snapchat adds GIF stickers via Giphy, plus new Friends and Discover screen tabs
Snapchat is bringing one of the best recent features of Instagram Stories to its own app, with the ability to add GIF stickers from Giphy to your posts. This is a notable reversal of the typical pattern we’ve seen of Instagram cloning Snapchat features, but it’s a good one for users since GIF stickers for Stories are basically the greatest thing ever invented on social media. The… Read More
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Instagram tests resharing of others’ posts to your Story
Instagram purposefully lacks a “Regram” button to promote original sharing, but it’s easing up on that philosophy when it comes to Stories. Instagram now confirms to TechCrunch that it’s testing an option that lets you share public feed posts from other users to your Story. This could let you add commentary and overlaid stickers to a meme, celebrity post or even a… Read More
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Instagram won’t comment on rumored video calling feature
Instagram copied the ‘Snap’ and now it might be going after the ‘chat’. A video calling feature was spotted in a non-public version of Instagram by WhatsApp industry blog WABetaInfo. It would let users who’ve begun an Instagram Direct message thread to video chat with each other. That could let people spend even more time in the app, but by actively… Read More
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Cambassy lets you be your country’s digital ambassador
Cambassy is a new app that lets you share the favorite things about your town, city, or country. You can think of it as a sort of breadcrumb travelogue that you leave behind for others to find and lets you include phots, tips, and comments about your favorite locations.
Created by Khalid Twaim and Omar Rabea, the company one a pitch-off in Oman and showed their early versions at Disrupt in Berlin. Read More
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Giphy builds transparent GIF library for Instagram Stories
Instagram now lets some users slap background-less GIFs sourced from Giphy onto their Instagram Stories. Rolling out for wider testing with a Giphy-branded design, the new GIF sticker engine could further differentiate Instagram Stories from Snapchat, which has yet to embrace the animation trend. Read More
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Instagram tests letting users post Stories directly to WhatsApp
Last October, Facebook extended the usage (and flexibility) of Instagram Stories — the Snapchat-like feature that lets you patch together photos and videos into a slide show — by making it easy to directly post a Story to Facebook. Now Facebook is looking at how to bring WhatsApp into the fold. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company is now running a test to let… Read More
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What were your best nine Instagram photos from 2017?
You might have noticed a new end-of-year trend on Instagram the past few days. If so, you can thank 2017bestnine.com, a website that lets you automatically collect and collage your most-liked photos of 2017. Best Nine has been around for a while, so many of you may be familiar with the tool already. But for those of you who are new to that Best Nine game, here’s how it works. First of… Read More
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Instagram will now add ‘Recommended’ posts to your feed
Instagram’s feed will now show users recommended posts – a change that earlier this month was spotted while in testing, and has since quietly gone live. The feature, described here in the company’s Help documentation, will suggest posts for you based on those that have been liked by other accounts you follow. The new section, “Recommended for You,” is clearly… Read More
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Instagram launches an alpha testing program on iOS and Android
Are you an early adopter? Okay, but are you a really early adopter who likes to test new, experimental things even if it means you’ll experience crashes and bugs? Then you may be interested to know that Instagram has launched Alpha testing programs on iOS and Android aimed at those who want to test pre-release versions of its popular photo-sharing app. Instagram has been running an… Read More
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