You can now share songs you listen to on Spotify right to Instagram Stories

Gone are the days of having to take tedious screenshots to share what you’re listening to on Spotify to Instagram Stories. The social network and music streaming service will now let you directly share the song, playlist, or album you’ve been listening to. On top of that, a link for the said song/playlist/album will show up on your Instagram Story so your followers can listen to. Just like other Stories, you can add stickers and text to your post. According to Instagram, this new Stories integration will also let third-party apps post content right to Facebook Stories as well, but the Spotify support is “coming soon.”

Source: The Verge

Instagram is trying out screenshot alerts for Stories

Instagram’s latest test might ruffle a few feathers. The social network is trying out a feature that will let your friend know that you took a screenshot of their story. But if you have this feature, you’ll also be able to see who has been taking screenshots of your Stories. You won’t be notified when someone takes a screenshot. Instead, there will be a camera shutter logo beside the user who took a screenshot of the photo in your list of story viewers.

When Instagram was asked about the test, the company said “we are always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and make it easier to share any moment with the people who matter to you.” As TechCrunch points out, Instagram might be trying to see if this would affect engagement when it comes to users watching Stories. Some might not use it as often if they knew their screenshots are being seen by the creator. Previously, notifications were only sent out when you took a screenshot of a private direct message.

Instagram will now let you add GIF stickers to your Stories

It seems like a long time coming, especially with the popularity of GIFs on the internet, but the wait is finally over. Instagram is rolling out to both Android and iOS users a new GIF button with the GIFs you can add provided by GIPHY. Just like how it’s done on other platforms, you can browse through trending GIF stickers or look for specific ones to add to your photo or video story.

Aside from that, Instagram users can expect in the near future the ability to upload photos and videos “of any size” into a story, similar to what you can do with Stories on Facebook. So instead of cutting off a part of an image or video, Stories will show the entire photo or clip in its original state. Any extra room will be filled by a color gradient to match the colors of the image or video.

Source: MacRumors

Instagram will let you put your favorite stories in your profiles

It might be taking away from the initial intention of the Instagram Story feature but as Instagram’s Yichen Wang justifies, “It’s a pretty carefree way to capture moments in your day, but it doesn’t mean they’re low-quality moments.” Instagram just updated its app to do a few new things. One is you now have the option to save in a private archive the stories you post. Another is you can pick the stories you have, put these in albums of sorts that you can name, and display these on top of your profile. The ability to create these albums hasn’t shown up on my phone yet but saving to archive is already available. Perhaps I need to start taking more Stories for the option to be available for me.

Source: Fast Company