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Social media platform, Instagram, has officially launched a suite of new features for its users including a BeReal clone called Candid Stories, the ability to post very short text "Notes," and groups.
The company revealed in a blog post that it was testing new features in a bid to "help people more easily share in spontaneous, fun ways to help create even stronger connections with friends."
"We’re starting to test Candid, a new way for you and your friends to capture and share what you’re doing right now in a story that’s only visible to those who also share their own," the company wrote. "Capture a candid from the stories camera, the multi-author story at the top of the feed, or from the daily notification reminder that starts after your first candid. For those who don’t want to receive the daily notification reminder, you can always turn it off in your Settings. We’re also testing a similar feature on Facebook Stories."
BeReal has become popular among young people since its launch in 2019. The app positions itself as an alternative to mainstream social media platforms by limiting users' ability to interact with one another and only allowing them to post once a day.
Instagram's Candid Stories is undoubtedly a clone of BeReal and it offers a similar experience. Candid Stories will allow users to share an image that includes a snapshot from both their front and back cameras, and they'll be able to take a candid from a daily notification reminder.
In addition to Candid Stories, Instagram is also introducing a new "Notes" feature, which allows users to append a 60-character status update to their profile in their inbox. The new Notes feature, however, won't be a Twitter alternative as they only allow 60 characters of text and emoji. These notes will only be shareable with a limited group of people, and they won't appear in the user's feed.
The platform is also introducing another new feature called "Group Profiles." This feature will allow groups of friends to create shared profiles with multiple contributors, and the platform is testing "collaborative collections" to enable multiple people to share posts in the same space in the app.
The introduction of Candid Stories and other new features is part of Instagram's ongoing effort to reinvent itself in a bid to compete with other social media platforms that have crept into the space. With a growing number of users looking for alternatives to mainstream social media platforms, it is obvious that the company wants to keep things fresh with new features and hopefully retain its user base.