Instagram brings mentions, links, and Boomerang to Stories

Instagram is trying to add more value to its Snapchat counterpart with a bunch of new features. One is being able to make Boomerang posts on Instagram Stories. Much like how the standalone Boomerang app works, just tap the record button and have the camera stitch together a burst of photos to turn these into a GIF-like video that plays forward and backward.

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Mute Instagram Stories you don’t want to see

Did you know you could mute Instagram Stories of specific users? All you need to do is head to the top of your Feed, tap and hold the profile picture of the person or brand Stories that you’d want to mute. From there you can select Mute [username]’s Story. The Stories you’ve muted will appear at the end of the Instagram Stories bar and won’t have a color ring around it to indicate an update. These stories won’t also play if you watch a sequence of Instagram Stories. If you change your mind, you can unmute the account by repeating the steps above and just select Unmute [username]’s Story.

Source: Instagram

Instagram kills off photo maps feature

You may or may not have been aware of the photo maps feature of Instagram. Now you don’t even have to think about it as Instagram is killing off the feature. According to a statement released by the social network, the feature wasn’t really widely used so Instagram has decided to just get rid of it and focus on other features. Photo maps, if you had it activated, shows a map you can zoom in on to see locations where you’ve geotagged photos. For now, you’ll be able to see your photo map but you won’t see those of others and Instagram has started to remove the feature for some users since last week.

This harks back to the roots of Instagram, where you used it much like a location-based app but you tagged photos instead of just tagging a location. Now, Instagram still has that spontaneity to it but it also now acts as a portfolio of sorts for some of its users, showing best parts of your life.

Source: Mashable

Latest Instagram app update brings pinch to zoom functionality across devices

While some of Instagram's more recent feature updates seem like slavish rip offs of Snapchat, they are adding some useful functionality that allows users to better work within the rather limited platform of square photos and videos. The latest update to the popular photo and video sharing app, version 9.2 now allows you to zoom into photos via the popular pinch to zoom gesture. It's a better way to zoom into details and minutiae. The update also offers a better low-light mode for Stories.