After being spotted in testing earlier this month, Instagram has this week officially announced its new option to mute profiles, enabling users to stop seeing updates from people without having to unfollow them.
As it sounds (and as it works on other social platforms), the mute option removes posts from chosen users from your Instagram timeline. You can still see each of these users’ posts on their profile page/s, and you’ll still be notified if they mention or tag you, but their updates won’t show up in your home stream.
The option can come in particularly handy for those old school friends or distant family members who you don’t necessarily need constant updates about, but don’t want to offend by unfollowing.
As explained by Instagram:
“To mute an account, tap the … menu in the corner of the post. From there, you can choose whether to mute posts, or mute posts and stories from an account. You can also mute posts and stories by pressing and holding on a story in your tray, or from a profile.”
As noted, the mute option was first spotted in testing, along with a range of other features which Instagram hasn’t rolled out yet.
Among other updates coming soon, as per those that have been spotted in testing, are:
Given the rate at which Instagram is rolling out new options, you can expect to see these soon, and each of these tools further adds to the platform’s creative capacity, helping to boost it over Snapchat in the battle for younger audience attention.
In fact, with the recent spate of bad news around Snapchat, it makes sense that Instagram’s working to add in so many new features so quickly, in order to capitalize on that drop in sentiment and attract straying Snap users.
Considering Instagram’s growth rate, it’s clearly winning out in this battle – and it may be possible that the latest spate of new additions could deliver a critical blow to Snapchat. Instagram’s not done yet, and through parent company Facebook, they have a lot more capacity to add new tools.
Will Snapchat be able to keep up? Will audiences stick with Snap as Instagram’s duplicate tools become more and more advanced?