Instagram Announces Video Chat, New Explore, Sharing to Stories, Camera Effects Platform

Instagram announced numerous new features today including Video Chat, a new Explore, sharing to Stories, and a Camera Effects Platform.

Here's a look at what's new!

Sharing to Stories:
From a sticker of your new favorite song on Spotify to action shots from GoPro, it’s now easy to share what you’re up to or how you’re feeling by posting directly to Instagram Stories from other apps. More apps will be adding the sharing to Stories feature soon. Just tap the share button in the Spotify or GoPro app and your content is pulled directly into the Instagram camera. From there you can edit and add to your story or send it via Direct. You don’t have to connect your Instagram account to other apps in order to share to Stories.


Camera Effects Platform for Instagram
Face filters, text styles and stickers help turn casual moments into experiences you can’t wait to share. Now we’re unlocking the ability for third parties to design unique, interactive camera experiences for their followers. That means you turn any video into a NBA dunkcam or add a cloud of hearts and Pomeranians to fluff up your photo.

If you see a new effect in Stories from an account you follow and want to try it yourself, just tap “Try it on” and the tool will be added to your tray. More fun creative effects from your favorite accounts are coming soon, including Ariana Grande, Baby Ariel, Liza Koshy, Vogue, and Buzzfeed.




Video Chat
More than 100 million Instagrammers watch or share on Live every day. But we’ve heard from our community that sometimes they also want to experience real-time video in a smaller group. In the coming weeks, we’ll bring video chat to Instagram and give friends a new way to spend time together — even when they aren’t actually together.


To start a video chat, simply tap the new camera icon at the top of a Direct thread. You can chat one-on-one or with a small group — and you can keep the conversation going for as long as you like. You can also minimize the video and continue the chat while doing other things on Instagram.

Video chat is testing now and will roll out globally soon.




The New Explore
People come to Explore every day to discover new ideas, people, and experiences. And now we’re excited to bring you a redesigned Explore that makes discovery even easier. Explore is still personalized for you, but the content is now organized into topic channels so you can browse across your interests and go deeper on any area you’d like.

The new Explore will be rolling out over the coming weeks.

You can download Instagram from the App Store for free.

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