Instagram Rolls Out New Features; Group Video Calling On WhatsApp Soon!

As Instagram is trying to take on Snapchat and expand its dominance, the social media company is working on to make Instagram a safer platform with more exciting new features. The Facebook-owned Instagram has seen a sea of changes in the last few years, and Instagram today stands with over a billion downloads.

From just a photo-sharing platform, Instagram has evolved as a full-fledged social media app with exquisite features. To take it to the next level, Facebook is now adding more features to the platform like video calling, AR camera and filters, a redesigned Explore page and an all-new upgraded anti-bullying feature to make Instagram safe.

Also, Instagram will now allow and make it simpler for more third-party apps to be integrated into the Stories, like Spotify and GoPro.

Group Video Calls On Instagram

The video chat feature is finally coming to the platform, and up to four users can make a video call together on the app. Also, users can minimize the video chat in between and continue to browse within the app.

 

To make a video call, the user needs to tap on the new camera icon which has been added to the top-right corner of the chat window.

New Features: AR Camera & Filters

Facebook is integrating its AR Studio into Instagram, and users can now use it to build custom filters of their own. The filters can also be used with the rear camera in addition to the front selfie camera. Which means now users can apply face filters for the selfies and “world effects” for the rear shots.

Users will get the AR option directly from the Story, by just adding it to their camera tray.

Anti-Bullying Features

With time, social media has turned out to be a strong turf of abuse and bullying which often goes unreported or undetected. The whole online world of internet is trying to fight online abuse and fake news. To make Instagram a safer place, it has upgraded its anti-bully software to filter strong comments.

The social media company has added a filter to weed out the offensive comments. The new anti-bullying filter will identify such comments on appearance or any threatening remarks and it will directly remove them.

If the users don’t want to filter their comments, they can switch off the feature in the Comment controls.

New Integrations In Stories

Instagram will now allow more apps to be integrated into the Stories, like Spotify and GoPro. Now, Instagram users won’t need to connect their Instagram account to a third-party app, if they want to post something on their wall or even to share their Stories.

They can now directly share a playlist, song or album to their Instagram account via Stories or a direct message. For GoPro, they can choose a clip from the GoPro app and share directly to the Instagram Stories. Users can also to edit the video using Instagram before sharing.

New Explore Page

To enhance the browsing experience on Instagram, the company has made some changes to its Explore page. The new redesigned Explore page will make it easy for users to go through the feed. They can choose their photo browsing category through icons and can find the content they want to see.

It has new options to choose from like topics related to architecture, photography, animals, movies and more. It is just a matter of selecting the desired category to view the content.

Group Video Calling On WhatsApp

Facebook has also announced that the newly-added group video chat feature on Instagram will be rolled out to WhatsApp as well, which will enable up to four users on WhatsApp to join a single video call.

The social messaging company is also on the verge of launching its in-app UPI-based payments feature for all the users in the country.