All About Instagram Features In 2022

Instagram is constantly surprising us. Nearly every week, Instagram introduces new features and keeping up with what’s fresh can be difficult right now more than ever. We all know that keeping up with updates on social media platforms is essential especially if you work in social media marketing, which is why we’ve created this handy blogpost to help ensure that no moment is left uncaptured! (Psst, we will continue adding new features to this list as we go, so be sure to keep an eye on this blog post if you want to stay up-to-date!)

Without further ado, let’s jump into all the nifty features that Instagram has rolled out recently!

Grid Pinning – You like it? You pin it! 

“Your profile is your space, so we’re looking for more ways to give you control over that experience.” – Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram.

One of the newest Instagram features is the ability for users to pin up to three photos or videos on their profile grid with the goal of providing brands and content creators a new way to express themselves. This functionality is somewhat similar to how you can pin comments on your posts too.

(Pinned Content Concept image source Instagram)

Immersive Viewing Experience 

As Instagram continues to position themselves as a video-centric platform instead of simply a photo-sharing application, this next feature that we’ll be exploring definitely doesn’t come as a surprise. 

“Taller photos and taller videos” that basically sums up one of the latest Instagram updates. With the rise of full-screen video content, Instagram is now offering users a more immersive viewing experience whereby photos and videos will be taller in the feed, and take up pretty much the entire screen. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s what TikTok, a popular short-form video social media platform looks like. 

3D Avatars

In the past, a profile on social media platforms was pretty much made with a profile picture and a short bio. With the rise of online avatars, the new feature of 3D avatars aims to change this and give users even more flexibility to personalise their online characters, just like what Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram said – “3D avatars are a dynamic visual representation of who you are in the Metaverse.”

“Representations in the metaverse should reflect the diversity of the real world. Avatars are just the first step toward enabling everyone to express themselves in their unique ways. When you create your avatar you can choose the right facial features, body types, clothing styles, and more to create your virtual self. We offered more than one quintillion different combinations when we launched our updated avatars last year, and we’re continuing to add more options to give people even more ways to express themselves,” said Manish Chopra, Director and Head Partnerships, India at Meta.

Scheduled Lives

You may be wondering – how is it possible to schedule a “live” event? 

Maybe a simpler way of thinking about this will be reserving a slot in the calendar so as to ensure that your audience will have a head’s up while helping creators with the discovery and distribution of Instagram Lives. With this new update, Live Scheduling will let creators schedule their stream up to 90 days in advance with a reminder function for their followers too. 

(Official Tweet by Instagram image source Instagram)

Your Activity Center

To further improve user’s content management experience within the app, Instagram has also rolled out a “Your Activity” feature which will allow users to view and manage their activity on the app all in one spot. 

With this new update, users will have the full liberty to control their content (Post, Stories, IGTV, and Reels) and their interactions (Comments, Likes, Story Sticker Reactions and more). You can also find content which you’ve recently deleted or archived, check out your search history, and find insights such as the amount of time you’ve spent on the platform. 

And that’s a wrap for now…

As you can see, Instagram is evolving fast and improving its user experience each day, truly making it one of the most prominent players on the social media landscape for a good reason. From minor updates such as improved scrolling experience to significant changes like the addition of Instagram Reels, you can never be bored when it comes down to what new features are added. 

At the end of the day, businesses have so much to gain from building a presence on social media platforms such as Instagram. Whether it’s building an engaged community, or reaching new customers, it just takes a little effort! We hope that this article helped you to catch up on some of the latest Instagram updates and once again, be sure to follow us to stay updated as we continue to update this list!