We’ve seen some pretty cool and innovative updates this month on Instagram, from improvements in DM’s to personalisation tools on profile pages, let’s explore what’s been going on with our Instagram Key Updates for Jan’25!
Live Location Sharing and Nicknames in DMs
Live location sharing is here, no more switching between iMessage and Instagram DM’s to follow someone’s live location! You can now share your live location privately for up to one hour in one-to-one or group chats. Have you ever wished you could nickname your friends in your group chat? Well, good news! Instagram has just rolled out nicknames, you can now change your friends’ names to whatever you’d like.
Music on Profiles
This new feature allows you to add a favourite song to your profile, talk about personalisation. Unlike other platforms and carousel posts in the feed this music will not automatically play, your visitors can control if they’d like to listen to it or not!
Updated replies in Broadcast Channels:
Creators can now enable replies in their broadcast channels, allowing their audience to respond to messages. Time-sensitive prompts can also be posted to encourage engagement, with their audience then having 24 hours to respond.
Instagram Teen Accounts
To ensure the safety of younger users, Instagram introduced Teen Accounts with default private settings for users under 16. Parental permission is required to change these settings, and additional supervisory features are available for parents to give them some peace of mind.
The square feed is back!
We can’t say if it’s 100% here to stay but the square feed we said goodbye to last year has made a reappearance! No news yet if you could make portrait posts your default but perhaps that’s next. So that’s all for the Instagram Key Updates for Jan’25!
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