Instagram could soon be rolling out a ‘Save Draft’ feature
If you’re an avid Instagram user, you know it can sometimes take a few tries before you come up with the perfect post. But as it stands right now, if you back out of a screen in the app, you’ll lose any image edits. Instagram is changing this by introducing a feature you may soon be using extensively: “Save Draft.”
Only a few Instagram users are able to take advantage of the new “Save Draft” option just yet, though it seems additional users are seeing it pop up as the month goes by. Right now the company has confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is indeed “just an experiment” for right now, but that doesn’t discount it popping back up again in the future as part of an update in the future or something to that effect.
Despite the excitement surrounding the test, it seems that unfortunately drafts aren’t in the cards definitively just yet, but Instagram is watching, and gauging the reaction to them, no doubt. So keep an eye out. It could be happening soon.
Via: TechCrunch
ICYMI: Google’s so much closer to delivery by drone
Today on In Case You Missed It: Google’s Project Wing is about to take off now that the US Government signed off on the company testing drone delivery within the country; perfect timing for Google’s commercial launch of the service sometime in 2017. Physicists from the University of New Mexico created a laser that can cool a crystal down to negative 296 degrees Fahrenheit, which could be useful for infrared detectors on satellites or to detect skin cancer.
In case you didn’t see Instagram’s video launching its new story function, you should see it just to sound informed when your friends talk about whether the company blatantly stole from Snapchat. Then wash that all down with YouTuber Eric Mouellic’s video showing how close he came to a huge fin whale. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Instagram’s ‘Stories’ feature looks a lot like Snapchat’s
How do you fight an immensely popular social app like Snapchat? For Instagram, it’s by copying one of Snapchat’s most popular features: stories. “Instagram Stories” lets you post as many photos and videos as you’d like in a slideshow format. And you won’t have to worry about them hurting your meticulously curated Instagram feed, as the stories will disappear in 24 hours (that sure does sound familiar!).
You’ll find stories from friends and popular accounts in a navigation bar at the top of your Instagram feed. Once you tap into one, you can move back and forth through the slideshow at your own pace. You won’t be able to leave public comments or like anything you see in a story, but you can still send a private message to the author. The latter change is a sign that this endeavor doesn’t quite fit into Instagram’s existing feature set.
Naturally, stories will follow whatever privacy settings you’ve chosen for Instagram. You’ll also be able to hide them from specific followers. I haven’t had a chance to test out the feature yet, but judging from the screenshots and videos, it also looks like there are plenty of editing options for making your stories “fun.”
While a bit shameless, it makes sense for Instagram to adopt one of Snapchat’s defining features. Since its inception, Instagram has been focused on curated feeds. Those still have a place today, but the company also needs a more relaxed form of posting to compete with Snapchat’s breezier style, where you don’t have to worry about framing the perfect shot for posterity. Instagram will be rolling out the stories feature on iOS and Android over the next few weeks.
Source: Instagram
Instagram Just Became Snapchat With ‘Stories’ That Disappear After 24 Hours
Instagram today announced the launch of a new feature called “Instagram Stories,” which lets its users post customized images and videos onto their profile, abiding by the ephemeral rule of rival service Snapchat: every post disappears completely within 24 hours. The company said that this lets users not have to “worry about overposting” and clogging up their profile in the process.
Stories will appear in a bar at the top of each user’s normal Instagram feed, updating with new posts of all the same friends, family members, and popular accounts they follow. Each time someone posts a new picture or video within their Story, a colorful ring circles their profile picture. Jumping into Stories is as easy as tapping on one of those profile photos, and swiping to move back and forward through each user slideshow.
Today, we’re introducing Instagram Stories, a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile. As you share multiple photos and videos, they appear together in a slideshow format: your story.
With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day — with as much creativity as you want. You can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools. The photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid or in feed.
Comments are allowed on Stories, but are only able to be sent through Instagram’s direct message feature, because “unlike regular posts, there are no likes or public comments.” Keeping in the vein of Snapchat, you can swipe up on your own story to see every Instagram member who has viewed the post so far. To add a bit of flair to a profile, users can also post specific Stories to their page if they decide they want to keep the photo or video longer than 24 hours.
Some users are reporting that the Instagram Stories update has already been added to their device via an update that describes only “Bug fixes and performance improvements,” but the company itself mentioned that the update should begin rolling out to iOS and Android devices “over the next few weeks.” You can download the Instagram app for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
Tag: Instagram
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Instagram should have had harassment prevention tools years ago
I was never sure when it was going to happen next. I’d open Instagram and see the heart-shaped notification icon lit up. Maybe three of you liked my latest #nofilter sunset shot! Except sometimes, instead of hearts, what I saw were comments from strangers. Usually mean ones.
Each time, I did the only thing you can do when you find yourself abused on Instagram: I swiped on the comment, hit the block button and reported it as hate speech. Most recently, a stranger left comments on half a dozen of my photos, one of which was from two-and-a-half years ago (meaning, you’d have to spend some time digging through my archive to find it).
After spending however many minutes it took to flag each comment about my neck flaps (what?), my fivehead (fuck you) and my “hopefully-cancerous” moles (sigh), I decided I was done. Not done with Instagram, but done sharing my photos with the world. I don’t like feeling like I’m giving in to the trolls, but with barely any control over who can see or comment on my posts, I don’t feel safe enough on Instagram to stay public.
To be clear, this isn’t about me having thin skin. Calling me gay because I posed for a picture with my future sister-in-law isn’t as cutting as you think. And to the guy who thinks I’m flat-chested, well, you’re just wrong. No, this is about my sense of safety. It’s a creepy feeling when a stranger goes out of his way to insult me, and to not even know why.
This is about my sense of safety.
But according to a Washington Post report published Friday, I might soon be able to reopen my account to the public. After speaking with Instagram’s head of public policy, the Post was able to confirm that the company is testing improved comment-moderation tools for “high volume comment threads,” including the ability to block certain words and disable comments on individual posts. “High-volume threads” is, of course, a euphemism for celebrity accounts — the Taylor Swifts and Kim Kardashians of the world — but Instagram told the Post that these features will eventually roll out to the rest of the community as well. In addition, an Instagram spokesperson tells me that the company has a team dedicated to keeping the community safe.
That’s great, but also too little, too late. This should have been a priority when Instagram launched six years ago. Even now that it is, the moderation tools are skimpy, and only famous people have the privilege of using them. Meanwhile, these features have long since been available on other social networks — in some cases even on Facebook, which owns Instagram.
These are not esoteric tools, either; many people would benefit from them. Not just public figures like me, but everybody — all 500 million users. Think of everyone whose posts became more widely visible just because they used a popular hashtag. And think of the teenagers who could be spared some public bullying if they, too, had finer control over their comments.
And it’s really those people who Instagram should have been keeping in mind all these years. As painful as harassment has been for me, I’m at least in a privileged position: I help run a large tech-news site that frequently covers Instagram. I have the platform to write an editorial like this one, and I can email a human at the company and tell her about my experience.
In Instagram’s defense, it’s not the only social network with a bullying problem. Twitter has long been a hotbed for harassment, with a racist campaign against comedian Leslie Jones being the most recent high-profile example. What makes Instagram different, though, is that the solutions have always seemed painfully obvious. Instagram was correct: We do need the ability to disable comments on select posts, or all of them, for that matter. But there are so many other no-brainer solutions not mentioned in that Post report. Give us the option of approving all comments before they go live, or to allow comments only from people we follow. Oh, and add a mute function, please.
None of these features would fundamentally change the site, either. This isn’t Twitter, whose entire premise is predicated on people speaking in public. For many of us, it’s really about the likes.
The solutions always seemed painfully obvious.
Besides, fewer comments would be good news for Instagram as well. If you let me disable comments from randos, I would never have to block anyone or report abuse, which means no one at Instagram would have to read my harassment report to decide if the comment in question fits their murky definition of hate speech. Not that Instagram ever responds to abuse reports anyway — it doesn’t. For all I know, no one’s even reading. Regardless, with granular privacy controls in place, Instagram wouldn’t have to be an arbiter of hate speech, as Twitter so frequently does. I’m not sure why that didn’t occur to them earlier.
What rankles most is that these tools would probably not have taken long to implement, what with all the engineers Instagram has at its disposal. Even if this were a serious undertaking, the company has already had plenty of time. Indeed, Instagram’s silence on harassment has been damning. This calendar year alone, the company has taken it upon itself to block swear words in comments, add an in-photo text translator, lengthen the video limit to 60 seconds, block links to Telegram and Snapchat, and screw with the order of people’s feeds. That’s to say nothing of the energy the company has invested in censoring nipples, launching a failed Snapchat competitor and trying to make Instagram Direct a thing.
It’s not that Instagram didn’t have the time or resources before now to take on harassment — it’s that until now, it wasn’t a priority.
Instagram Plans Launch of New Comment Moderation Feature for All Users
Social media app Instagram is planning to launch a new feature that allows its users personalized control over the comments shared on each of their posts.
The company has long had blanket rules for what constitutes appropriate speech on its network, but the new comment filter ability will let each user tweak specific rules to their own liking, since “different words or phrases are offensive to different people” (via The Washington Post).
Some businesses have already gotten a look at the new feature, letting them automatically weed out comments and posters with specific triggering phrases. In the next few weeks, more “high-profile accounts” will get their hands on comment moderation, with the ability to also switch comments off completely on a post-by-post basis.
“Our goal is to make Instagram a friendly, fun and, most importantly, safe place for self expression,” said Instagram’s head of public policy, Nicky Jackson Colaco, in a statement to The Post. “We have slowly begun to offer accounts with high volume comment threads the option to moderate their comment experience. As we learn, we look forward to improving the comment experience for our broader community.”
Normal users will have to wait a while longer to moderate their own posts, since Instagram said it will launch the feature to all its users “in the coming months.” The company is planning on using feedback from higher-volume accounts to fine tune the new feature before handing it out to its more than 300 million daily active users.
Instagram is available for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Tag: Instagram
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Apple Launches iBooks Instagram Page to Share Book Quotes, Reviews, and More
Earlier this weekend, Apple began promoting book-related content with a new Instagram account centered around its iBooks digital platform. The launch of the iBooks Instagram page coincided with the release of the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which the account posted about yesterday.
Apple also wished author J.K. Rowling a happy birthday through its new verified Instagram page, but otherwise the content appears to largely be focused on introducing followers to fresh and notable stories through quotes, author spotlights, and unique, short videos.
Some of the novels referenced so far on the new page include Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, Emma Cline’s The Girls, and Wendy Walker’s All Is Not Forgotten. All of the mentioned books released between June and July, so it seems iBooks will keep its promotions aimed at recently launched novels while it gains more Instagram followers in its early stages.
Thank you for coming into this world and bringing so much magic into our lives. ✨ #HappyBirthdayJKRowling
A video posted by iBooks (@ibooks) on Jul 31, 2016 at 10:11am PDT
You can check out Apple’s new Instagram account for iBooks here.
Tags: iBooks, Instagram
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Instagram is letting users filter words out of post comments
Twitter and Facebook have taken online harassment more seriously in 2016, though their approach is still light-handed, with the former taking years to finally ban one of its worst pitchfork-marshaling demagogues. Instead of coming down harder on moderation, Instagram is putting abuse-prevention in the hands of its users. They will soon be able to set up word filters, letting them control the tone of discussion below each image — or turn off comments in a post entirely. But is it enough to just let folks block triggering phrases?
The feature is already being tested on “high-profile” celebrity accounts, which conceivably field a large volume of comments from other users. It will officially roll out to those first and then to the masses in the next few weeks, according to The Washington Post.
It’s a tough balance to keep online communities safe but not overly restrict free speech: Land too hard on one side and you’ll enrage proponents of the other. But social networks’ previous hands-off strategy letting the community sort itself out has brought accusations of complicity when they don’t prevent harassment and abuse. Letting users block certain offensive or inflammatory words will hopefully prevent some escalation or term-specific targeting.
Of course, trolls and haters shielded with the anonymity of the internet will probably find a way around the block in the same way they have since AOL chatrooms got parental filters: misspellings, euphemisms, and coded language. The exact bigoted or derogatory terms might be banned, but determined thugs will always find a way to get their words heard.
It’s also unclear from the Post’s report whether Instagram will let users block comments only on a per-post basis, or if they will get to turn them off entirely. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for a feature Facebook has had for years: allowing your posts to be visible or accessible by certain friends — or invisible to known trolls.
Source: The Washington Post
Researchers can guess your age based on your Instagram likes
If you’re the sort of person who carefully prunes your unloved Instagram photos, chances are good you’re a teenager. At least, that’s one of the findings in a new set of research papers on social media behaviors from Penn State University. As associate professor Dongwon Lee told the Atlantic, the practice of going back and deleting photos is common among teens on the platform because they, “want to be very popular so they’re very conscious of the likes they’re getting.”
Teens also tend to interact, comment and like more photos than their older counterparts, Lee’s team found, but they also post fewer of their own photos. (Although, this might only seem true, since teens are more likely to go back and delete their own content.) On the other hand, adults tend to have a broader range of interests, whereas teens usually post about their “mood or personal well being.”
Lee’s team focused their research on Instagram and its 500 million users because the API was the easiest to work with out of the major social networks. They also found that a “Like” on Instagram is a much less complex compared to a similar reaction Facebook or Twitter, where a heart could mean anything from “I like your tweet” to “I saw this and now I’m ending this conversation.”
Recommended Reading: Life lessons from Mario
Mario is living the
American dream
Rob Harvilla,
The Ringer
This week The Ringer has been discussing that unique group of people and things that we can all agree are enduring and iconic parts of culture. We’re talking the likes of Google Maps, Woz and The Rock — all on the list, by the way. One particular selection caught my eye: Mario. Yes, the Nintendo Mario. When you stop and think about it, that plumber can teach us a lot about life.
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The tumbler Tumblr This is an interesting look at how bloggers and podcasters are changing the way gymnastics is covered, and they’re doing so from a fan’s perspective. Consider it your Olympic primer. |
Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, unfiltered The filter-driven photo and video app’s CEO chats about the past, present and future of his visual social network, including how Instagram has some things in common with the printing press. |
AIVAnet 