Instagram has become a popular platform for sharing photos, videos, stories and had had very useful features it has copied from rival social media apps such as Stories from Snapchat. There are more features the app could have or copy from other rival or similar apps and here’s my wishlist.
Lists
Twitter has them and is giving them the attention users have been asking for. The company already has separate tabs on its app just for lists to create swipeable alternative timelines from the home tab. The lists tab joins three more other tabs Twitter is adding to its navigation menu including Topics and Bookmarks. The navigation menu will now have Home, Search/Discover/Explore, Notification, Messages, Bookmarks, Lists and Topics.
Lists would work just as well for Instagram. Lists would be based on different interests and won’t put them on your main feed but on a separate tab in the app just like Twitter. This will make it easy to follow drama, food or photography accounts without them appearing on your main feed and can visit separately.
Commenting on Stories
Stories has been one pivotal feature for Instagram after copying it from Snapchat. This feature has been making a dent on Snapchat Stories view counts as it now boasts of having over 500 million daily active users against 203 million daily active users(These are January 2019 stats and the numbers could be more by now)
Instagram has been adding more features to Stories to engage more users such as adding Music plus lyrics, Chat Sticker, Polls, Close Friends and redesigning the camera interface.
It should be easier to respond to Stories without your comment going to the DMs. It’s weird when you do a Story and gets close to 250 DMs and then you get anxious if you should answer them making you quit the app for a while.
Responses on Stories should stay there and never end in up in anyone’s DMs unless they choose to.
Swipe up for All
What’s up with users needing to have 10,000 followers for them to get the Swipe Up feature for their Stories – its inconvenient and feels elitist. Instagram needs to let users have this feature for all users irrespective of the number of users.
Hide Stories feature
I’d pay for this. LOL, jk. But seriously Instagram should seriously consider having this feature. With this feature enabled, you would just open the app, start scrolling through your messy feed or go straight to the explore page.
I hate seeing those unviewed Stories on top of my feed or in the middle especially if you don’t want to swipe through all of them and you’re avoiding the sponsored stories Instagram is about to double between Stories(back-to-back ads) of the people you follow.
Also, bring anonymous Story Viewer.
No more Links in bio
Instagram should make links clickable when you include them on photo captions.
Rewind and Fast Forward on Videos
That awkward moment you have to wait for the video you’re watching to end so you could go back and restart because your sound was off and missed something important. Instagram should port playback controls it has on IGTV to the normal videos.
Compact View
Instagram should also have different view modes but one I want is Compact View. Third-party Instagram app, Friendly for Instagram has some of these features and its compact view mode removes the likes(Instagram has already implemented hiding the like count), comments and captions os that there’s nothing between two posts. I love that decluttering.
Other features
- Comments but editable – no need to delete your comment to write a new one
- timeline overview to let you look for photos depending on month or year instead of the endless scroll
- ability to search DMs
- the versatility of ratios when posting multiple photos
One More Thing
You won’t get ads scrolling Instagram on the web either on your phone using Chrome(or your browser app of choice) or on the desktop. Also, Friendly for Instagram has most of these features and you download it here.
Instagram should clone the features other third-party Instagram apps already have since most of its features have been copied from its other rivals like Snapchat.
What other features do you wish Instagram had or should have?
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