Instagram’s Stories features — Facebook’s answer to Snapchat — has proven popular. The firm has been testing new ways to expand it, and is now working on a feature known as ‘Type’ (reported by The Next Web). This feature first appeared in Japan last year, but the firm is now opening it up to testers in Europe as well. Unlike typical stories, Type’s conceit is that you actually type and share on a colourful but plain background of your choosing, taking off the social stress of needing to take a new photo for every image and simply sharing your thoughts.
This feature isn’t one new to Facebook’s social media properties, indeed the firm has been letting users use WhatsApp Status feature to post plain text posts as well, which has been very popular, at least anecdotally.
Instagram’s new Type feature is all about adding new ways to share, and differentiating the platform as a whole from rival product Snapchat which appears to have stagnated.
Instagram is also testing screenshot notifications which trigger when someone takes a screenshot of your story. Both the ‘screenshotter’ and the ‘screenshotted’ will be notified. On the bright side, Instagram is nice enough to warn you the first time, so new users won’t necessarily fall afoul.
Both of these features remain in beta as of the time of writing, but are expected to roll out over the coming year.