At the end of last year, Instagram set its sights on BeReal and copied one of its most distinctive features: short text statuses. Called “Notes,” this feature allows you to add a brief text message that everyone will see above your profile picture in the direct message tray. Essentially, it’s an evolution of the traditional text statuses found in messaging apps (the ones that people usually only see when browsing a profile or viewing group members).
Now, Instagram has taken it a step further and updated “Notes” to allow users to add the songs they are currently listening to. While it may remind us of Discord‘s status feature, where we can see what songs our contacts are listening to if they have linked their accounts with Spotify, “Notes” requires us to manually add a 30-second snippet of the chosen song, along with a brief comment about it.
In addition to this update, Instagram has also added another useful feature to “Notes.” If you follow people who speak different languages than yours, a translation button will automatically appear below their statuses, allowing you to translate what they say.
With these updates, it’s clear that Instagram has moved away from its previous intentions of focusing on video content and now seems to be placing more emphasis on text-based content (while still maintaining the classic photos and Reels, of course). This approach is shared by its parent company, Meta.
A month ago, a leak revealed that Meta is working on a Twitter clone app codenamed “Project 92,” which would focus on the familiar and beloved text-based posts that Twitter users know and love. This app would be released as both a standalone app and integrated into Instagram, even allowing users to interact with users from other social networks like Mastodon through the ActivityPub protocol.
“We’ve heard from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is managed sensibly, one they can trust and rely on for distribution,” said Meta’s Product Director, Chris Cox, in a clear reference to Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
