Just a few weeks after introducing their new Archives option to every user, Instagram announced that it is currently testing a Favorites option for the social media giant across a small percentage of its users. We all know that Instagram doesn’t offer a whole lot of options when it comes to who can see our posts. Currently, (for the vast majority of us, anyway), Instagram only provides two ways of sharing posts: public and private. Making your profile public means that anyone under the sun can see everything you post without you even knowing it. A private profile, on the other hand, means that only your followers can see what you post, which greatly limits your ability to acquire new followers, which is, let’s face it, a big deal for any Instagram user.
So Instagram’s new Favorites feature is a long awaited upgrade across the Instagram community. The new profile option will allow users to add Instagram friends (or strangers, or whoever) to their Favorites list, which will have its own separate feed. When posting a picture or video, you will be able to choose whether or not you want to include it to your Favorites posts by tapping the Favorites green star icon. You’ll be able to track your posts on your Favorites feed and be able to see whose Favorites feed you are on, as posts from these users will display that same green star in the top right corner.
The new Favorites feature isn’t unlike the sharing options available on Facebook (where users can decide who gets to see their posts, albeit without separate fields), which has owned Instagram since 2012. If it is made available across the whole Instagram fan base, the Favorites option will give users the freedom to choose which of their posts they don’t mind sharing with the public, which they will reserve for their followers, and which, possibly posts that are more personal in nature, they will choose to share only with those individuals they have added to their Favorites list.
Another good move by Instagram towards offering their users more control over who can see their posts, and taking away some of the harder decisions like deleting content they are no longer comfortable sharing with the world at large.