Instagram launches Notes and BeReal-like Candid Stories; more group-focused features in the works

Instagram announced a slate of new features that have started rolling out or have entered testing this week. After months of testing the Meta-owned social media platform has launched the Notes feature, along with its response to BeReal called Candid Stories.

Instagram’s Notes is one of the most interesting features that launched this week. Its release came shortly after a report that Meta is considering it as a potential alternative to Twitter.

“During testing, we learned that people liked having a lightweight, easy way to share what’s on their mind and start conversations,” Instagram said in the announcement post. The main concept for Notes is to provide users with a more “casual and spontaneous” to communicate. This explains why it only supports a maximum of 60 characters.

Notes function quite like traditional Instagram Stories, as it also stays up for 24 hours only. But instead of showing in the Stories panel on the home page, Notes will appear at the top of a user's inbox. Users can also choose to only share Notes with people on their Close Friends list or select from their followers who they follow back.

Meanwhile, details about Candid Stories were previously discovered and was ultimately confirmed by Meta, suggesting that it will function much like BeReal. Users will get intermittent reminders throughout the day to share their candid photos or videos. They can also share Candid Stories directly through the stories camera and the multi-author story at the top of the feed.

Instagram also announced that a couple of new features tailored to be used as groups are already in testing, including the upcoming Group Profile, which practically functions similarly to Facebook Groups.

Users part of a Group Profile will be able to share photos and videos just like they would for their personal pages. But any content shared this way can only be viewed by friends who are part of the Group Profile.

Instagram is also working on a new way to save posts in a feature called Collaborative Collections. Currently, every user can tap the save button for posts that they want to revisit later on. Saved posts can be organized into collections that are private to every user. But with Collaborative Collections, users can share folders of saved posts as groups or through one-on-one DMs on the platform.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash