Finally, Instagram Adds Feature that Allows You Share Your Friends’ Posts!

Instagram just continues to add more interesting features to the delight of its users. According to a report by TechCrunch, Instagram has commenced testing on a new feature that allows you to re-share another user’s post and add a caption or comment to it.

It’s like a “retweet” feature, but for Instagram (so “regram”?). The new feature allows you to compliment other people’s post or embed a ‘see post’ button to promote your own.

Unfortunately reshared posts can’t be shared onto your timeline. All re-shares go to your Instagram Stories. The feature is reportedly confined to a small set of users for now.

Instagram confirmed the report. “We’re always testing new ways to make it easier to share any moment with friends on Instagram”, the company said.

How to Use Instagram Embed

To reshare a post, pick a permanent public post and tap the button to embed it in your story. Once selected, you can customise it to highlight or downplay the author of the post, and add comments and images using Instagram’s tools.

People who view your story can tap to see the original shared post by tapping the “see post” button. Users who don’t want their posts shared have the option to turn this off in their settings.

What benefits would this have?

This feature, if finally mainstreamed, would be a huge relief for users. Why?

Every Instagram user knows that the platform is so much different from other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The most obvious difference is the inability to share other people’s post. Users have often had to take a screenshot of posts they find interesting to re-post them. This is not always so convenient. The most you can do is share to a friend, or a group; but not to all followers.

So hopefully, this new feature would help in fixing this. Now, creatives and brands can garner more likes for a post. And regular users can make their posts go viral when they frequently re-share it on their Stories, rather than re-posting them every time.

Instagram didn’t confirm if the feature would go mainstream. But we’re hoping it does.