If you can believe it, Instagram is testing a new feature that mimics other social networks. TechCrunch reports Instagram confirmed tests of “reposts” to put someone else’s content on your own timeline. It’s similar to Twitter’s retweets or the kind of reshares that are common on Tumblr and Facebook and also tested on TikTok.
TechCrunch writes that the “repost” feature was noticed by Matt Navarra, a social media consultant who posted images in a Twitter thread on Wednesday. However, Alessandro Paluzzi noticed it in development back in mayshows that Instagram has been working on it for a while.
Sharing someone else’s post for your own followers to see isn’t entirely new to Instagram users. Users have been able to share public posts to their followers, but only on their Instagram story or via direct messages. Now the test would allow users to share a post on their feeds without having to screen and repost or go through another source.
Aside from reposts in your own feed, I noticed on my iPhone that Instagram has tweaked the sharing options across platforms. Now it pushes the buttons to share to Snapchat, Messenger or WhatsApp prior to direct-to-DM sharing, again similar to TikTok’s approach.
Instagram has rolled back a test shifting the app to an AI-powered full-screen feed of photos and video — part of TikTok’s apparent slow metamorphosis — but isn’t giving up the effort. Another recent test allows Instagram users to select multiple posts and mark them as “not interested” to train the suggestion algorithm to their preferences.
