The company would not comment on possible features being tested but did confirm it was not building a native sharing feature.
Instagram is rumored to be testing a number of new features including a hashtag selector tool, the ability to geo-fence posts and a video-tagging feature, according to a TechCrunch report.
Why marketers should care
Instagram is continuing to build out its platform to attract more advertisers and marketers. Now, with more than 1 billion monthly active users, the Facebook-owned app is rumored to be testing features that could help businesses in a number of ways.
Hashtag Selector Tool. Found in the Instagram Android apps’s code by a mobile researcher, TechCrunch says the hashtag selector tool would allow users to add hashtags to a post that would not be listed in the caption. The benefit is a shortened list of visible hashtags, limiting the amount of distractions within a post’s caption. It would also make it possible for Instagram to surface more content via hashtags.
The hashtag selector tool could give marketers a broader reach with organic posts, offering brands the opportunity to select multiple hashtags they may be hesitant to add for fear of cluttering a post’s caption.
Geo-fenced posts. The same mobile researcher who found the hashtag selector tool code identified a potential “Choose Location” feature offering up a list of countries where a post should be displayed. This would be a big benefit to any marketers with organic content aimed at different geographic areas, giving them the ability to localize posts by the country of their choosing. While ads are able to be targeted by a ZIP code or mile-radius, this would give organic posts a similar targeting feature by country.
Video tagging. Instagram would not confirm whether or not it was testing a hashtag selector tool or geo-fenced posts but did confirm to TechCrunch it had rolled out a new video-tagging feature, adding a button to videos that lists the people who were tagged in it. According to TechCrunch, the feature is still in beta mode and is only available to users who have been opted in to the test.
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