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Instagram’s Repost Feature

Instagram’s Repost Feature: What’s Cooking?

Author: Team WH
Published On: 23-09-22
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Instagram looks and works the same way as Facebook in almost all its features except one—unlike Facebook, you can’t repost another user’s post on your feed. Of course, you can share the content of public accounts through stories. However, Meta is considering bridging this gap as well. 

A social media consultant named Matt Navarra tweeted about the possibility of a repost feature on Instagram earlier this month. Later on, Meta confirmed this fact by saying, “We plan to test this soon with a small number of people.”

What do we know about this feature?

Most details about this feature are unknown and have been kept under wraps. The tweet by Navarra shows the feature option on the Instagram page of its CEO Adam Mosseri. You find out more by checking out the content there.

  • There is a possibility that each post will have an icon for the option of reposting
  • An individual can, however, hide/disable this option if they don’t want their post to be reshared.

Alessandro Paluzzi shared more insights into this potential feature launch in this tweet thread.

A Meta member confirmed, “We’re exploring the ability to reshare posts in Feed — similar to how you can reshare in Stories — so people can share what resonates with them, and so original creators are credited for their work.”

When will the repost feature reflect in your app?

Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to this question. Since this is still a beta version, the possibility of it becoming a permanent feature depends on people’s feedback. 

The reason behind this slow testing pace might be associated with the feature drawing a harsh reaction from the public in the past. 

As a best practice, companies release new features to smaller audiences for testing before a full-fledged roll-out. Recently, a new Instagram algorithm promoted a more entertainment-based algorithm, but it received a lot of public outrage. So, Meta has decided to test the waters slowly with a staggered testing approach.

Expected changes if this becomes a permanent feature

In case people appreciate this feature, just like Facebook or Twitter, your feed can also have content by other people. Some of the new angles to Instagram could be:

  • People who relate to it can share it on their feed as well and not just as a story. 
  • The alternate way of sharing relatable content is either recreating or mixing reels. With the new means of reposting, the original creators will have more instances of getting their due credit. 

Till now, the only way one could share some time on their feed was through:

  • screen recording the content 
  • taking a screenshot of a picture
  • or using some other app to enable this feature

If this feature gains popularity, resharing content will become easier. Third-party resharing/reposting apps will face a drawback as a result. However, users would be happier with one less app on their phones.

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