Instagram’s most glaring feature omission is the ability for a person to reshape someone else’s post with everyone they follow a la Twitter’s retweet and Facebook’s share buttons. But that’s beginning to change.
Instagram has begun testing a way for people to share someone else’s public post to their own followers through Stories, an Instagram spokesperson said on Wednesday, confirming TechCrunch’s earlier report.
According to TechCrunch, people can share someone else’s public post appearing in their main feed to their own Story by tapping on the existing share button that’s used to privately share the post with friends through Instagram’s direct messaging feature. A new option enables people to add the post to their Story so that anyone who follows them will be able to see the post when viewing their Story within 24 hours of the post being added. People can tap on the reshared post to see the original version.
Instagram will not notify people when someone reshares their public post in a Story, according to the spokesperson, but people can prevent others from resharing their posts to Stories by toggling off the option within Instagram’s in-app settings.
During the test, Instagram will only count reshare-related impressions when people tap on the reshared post to view the original version, the spokesperson said.
If and when Instagram expands the test beyond the small percentage of users currently participating, it could significantly expand the reach of brands’, publishers’ and influencers’ organic posts as well as ads in the same way that Twitter’s retweet and Facebook’s share buttons already do.
And if people prove interested in sharing others’ posts on Instagram, that could buoy the opportunity for companies to use the Facebook-owned photo-and-video app to recoup the organic reach they stand to lose on Facebook following the social network’s most recent News Feed change.
About The Author
Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles.
He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.