Instagram announces global launch of 30-second video ads
Advertising pays the bills for many tech companies, and to that end, Instagram has announced some changes in its advertising platform that means users will soon see 30-second video adverts in their feed.
By leveraging Facebook’s infrastructure, Instagram has made it easier for advertisers (large and small) to reach their target audience. Advertisers will be able to roll out ads up to 30 seconds in length so that they can ‘engage in richer storytelling‘, while users are still limited to 15 second segments. Ads are now available in more than 30 countries – including Italy, Spain, Mexico, India and South Korea.
Advertisers will also be able to embed actionable buttons in the adverts, enabling users to install apps or visit a website from the ad.Instagram is also rolling Marquee – a premium product that helps drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame – perfect for events like movie premieres and new product launches.
If you are an Instagram user, what do you think of the upcoming 30 second video ads? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Instagram
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Instagram is now adding Direct Messages with Instagram Direct
Instagram has been around FOREVER, and it just seems to gain popularity all the time. Even with “competitors” like Vine and SnapChat, people still opt to go to Instagram to post their favorite pictures, even if it’s of their dinner every day.
Back in 2013, Instagram introduced a way for users to share images and comments with either just one person or a small group of users. Instagram Direct has been a way to not have to deal with the slew of different users that you already follow, instead you can focus on sending that embarrassing vacation photo with just your close-nit friends.
Now, Instagram has added the ability to Direct Message another user from Instagram Direct. The move makes sense in light of the fact that Instagram is still growing, and has really been turning into a hybrid of both Twitter and Facebook, while maintaining a smaller profile.
Today’s updates also bring a brand new way to start conversations around what you see on Instagram. When you find something inspiring or funny, your first instinct is often to share it with friends who you know will appreciate it. Today, people do this by @-mentioning friends in comments, so much so that nearly 40% of comments include an @-mention. This update has made it easier to share content that you love.
It seems that Instagram is trying to kill the “@” action that everyone performs just about every other social media platform uses. It will be interesting to see whether this catches on, and if this will influence any changes to other social media platforms.
Let us know what you think about these changes in the comments below, and whether you actually use Instagram Direct, or if you just Instagram to look at those dinner pictures from two days ago.
Source: Instagram
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Instagram adding several new features to Instagram Direct
Instagram Direct is the social media site’s way of directly sharing content with friends and family, and it’s been a success for the site since it launched a few years back. Today, Direct is getting some new features to make it even better, including threaded messaging and a way to share photos and videos on your feed straight to specific people.
The threaded messaging feature makes Instagram Direct work pretty similarly to text messaging and group messaging. The threads will follow conversations depending on which people are in the conversation, and you can name groups and quickly share things through a dedicated camera button and emoji sticker button.
Instagram is also pushing the sharing aspect of the site, adding a share button directly to posts next to the comment and like button. This will let you send content to direct messages and groups, and is designed to skip the step of mentioning someone in an Instagram comment.
Privacy hasn’t changed with these new features, so anything you share directly will only be seen by whoever you specify, and the photos and videos will only be visible to people that could already see the content normally, so you won’t be able to circumvent private accounts this way.
source: Instagram
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Instagram Improves ‘Instagram Direct’ Private Messaging Capabilities
Instagram today announced a major update to the Instagram Direct feature that it first introduced in 2013, allowing users to send threaded messages and content from their feeds through the private messaging function.
Prior to today, Instagram Direct could only be used to send a single photo privately to a friend or a group of friends, where it could be commented on away from the public eye. There was no way to share content from a user’s feed to a direct message, and there were no conversation management tools, both feature oversights that Instagram has now corrected.
Following an app update, it will be possible to share a photo in your Instagram feed privately with a group of friends, a function that Instagram believes will replace the practice of @mentioning people to draw their attention to a particular photo.
A new arrow located next to the “Like” and “Comment” icons on each photo will allow an image to be sent to a friend or a group of friends through Instagram Direct.
Instagram Direct is also gaining threaded messages, making it easier to manage conversations. It will no longer be necessary to start a new conversation each time you want to share a photo or a video.
Threaded messages make it easier to go back and forth with the people you talk to the most. Instead of creating a new conversation every time you send a photo or video, your threads are based on the people in them — and your moments flow along naturally. We’ve also added the ability to name your groups, a quick camera feature to respond with a selfie on the fly, and larger-than-life emoji for when there are just no words.
Instagram has introduced several significant changes to its service over the last few months. In addition to adding search capabilities to the web in July, the company also changed a signature feature last week, allowing users to upload portrait and landscape photos in addition to square photos.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/137644108?color=ffffff&title=0&%2338;byline=0&%2338;portrait=0
Instagram can be downloaded from the App Store for free. The new update will be available as of today. [Direct Link]
Instagram receives update allowing for landscape formats
Instagram v7.5 is now available on iOS and Android. Users will now be able to upload their photos and videos in portrait and landscape orientations. A sample image has been posted above.
Instagram will no longer auto crop your shared pictures and videos to make them fit inside the square format. From now on, the size/orientation of an image or video will remain the exact same as when originally taken. Pictures won’t be cramped anymore, your friends won’t get cut out of selfies and you can even share full size panoramas and wide-screen videos.
A new format icon will appear when uploading a picture or video allowing users to adjust the orientation as needed. In addition, when your friends see your recent activity they will see the media the same as you do, meaning it takes effect on both ends. But that’s not all! Instagram will include a new feature letting users adjust the intensity of filters right within the app. Best of all, not only does this work for your photos, but also your videos. These enhancements will be a welcome improvement and will make your story even more dramatic and appealing to the eye.
Source: Instagram
Come comment on this article: Instagram receives update allowing for landscape formats
Latest Instagram update brings support for landscape and portrait photo sharing
Instagram has always been one of the easiest ways to share photos to the world, but in the past, that hasn’t come without its caveats. The Facebook-owned social networking platform has only ever allowed for the sharing of square photos, but that’s changing today. In a new update that’s rolling out on Android, Instagram will finally let you post full-size portrait and landscape photos.
Trying to fit certain images in a square format can be pretty difficult. In fact, the Instagram team says that nearly one in every five photos posted to the site aren’t in the standard square format, which is why the company is changing its ways. After you receive the update, simply tap on the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Your photo will show up in your feed in the orientation that you’ve chosen. But to keep your profile looking clean, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.
This will of course make watching and uploading videos easier as well, as the app now gives folks the ability to post widescreen videos without the need to download a third party application to do so.
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Last month Instagram announced that it would begin supporting 1080×1080 resolution photos, which was a much-needed addition to the platform. Between the bump up in resolution and these new formatting changes, our Instagram feeds are about to look a heck of a lot better.
Oh, and one more thing – to celebrate this new change, the official Star Wars Instagram account has posted a new mini-trailer for The Force Awakens. Seriously, you don’t want to miss this. Check it out below:
http://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js
The big version 7.5 update is rolling out now, so head to the link below to grab the latest version! What are your thoughts on this move? Will you miss square-only photo sharing, or is this a feature that’s been long overdue? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
Instagram Announces In-App Support for Portrait and Landscape Modes
Instagram today announced that the popular app would begin letting users post photos and videos in both portrait and landscape modes, expanding upon the all-inclusive square format for which the service is well-known. The company notes it discovered that nearly one in five posts aren’t in the square format, so today’s decision comes from its mission statement of putting each user’s “visual story” first and the format second.
Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.
It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end.
Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way.
The company believes that the update makes videos “more cinematic than ever” thanks to widescreen, and that instead of a segregated selection of filters for photos and videos, now all filters can be used on any type of moment. The update is live now and should be rolling out to all Instagram users today. Those who have yet to download Instagram [Direct Link] from the App Store can do so for free.
Dear Veronica: Is this the end of portable gaming devices?
First things first, I wanted to let you guys know that you can now subscribe to Dear Veronica on iTunes! We’ll have an RSS feed up soon for you non-iTunes people, so don’t think we forgot about you. These things just take time.
Episode-wise, I’m excited to welcome onto the show my friend and my former Tekzilla co-host Patrick Norton of TekThing! He’s going to set you straight on the best home automation setup. Plus, we talk about following (or not) awkward acquaintances on Instagram.
Keep sending in those questions to me via email, or on Twitter using the hashtag #DearVeronica. See you next time!
Instagram tries a faster, sleeker Android photo editor
Not happy with having to wade through filters and other editing tools just to post your Instagram shots? You might have a much simpler solution in the near future. Droid-Life has noticed that Instagram is trying out a new photo editor on Android that squeezes things into a single, simpler page that lets you add comments, tag people and apply filters. You only have to jump to another screen if you’re eager to make in-depth tweaks.
Don’t expect to try this editor just yet. You need to be running Instagram 7.3 (which isn’t automatically rolling out to everyone), and the new interface only appears to be available to a handful of people — we couldn’t get it to show up on 7.3 despite following instructions to the letter. For now, this is more of an experiment than a full-fledged upgrade.
[Image credit: Droid-Life]
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Droid-Life
Instagram update speeds up editing, posting process on Android
An update for Instagram on Android, taking it up to version 7.3.0, has been spotted and is apparently rolling out to users. This new version appears to change the process one follows to edit and filter pictures before posting them on the service.
Users of Instagram are familiar with the three steps one follows when making a new post. After selecting an image, the app gives users a chance to crop the image, then apply some filters, and finally add a caption and some other optional information to the post.
The new process takes users directly to a new screen with most of these steps combined on this single screen. The selected image itself can be swiped on to move between filters which are displayed in real time as they are selected. A small edit button is located in the bottom left corner to access the traditional editing options. A tag button is present in the bottom right corner for tagging other users. Below all of this is a slider of nearby locations that can be selected and options for cross-posting to other services. There is also an entry field for the caption.
You can check out a video below showing how this new interface works. Use the download links to get Instagram or check to see whether the update is available for your account.
Click here to view the embedded video.
source: Droid Life
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