New Features for Holidays Introduced by Instagram
With Holidays approaching, Instagram has added new features for the holidays such as Collages for Stories, new fonts, seasonal Add Yours template and other features.
It is officially launching the tool as a part of its strategy for its holiday season push. Instagram has been promoting its collage tool as means of showcasing your Year on Stories with its update collection from 2024.
Instagram has been experimenting with collages for quite some time and it has also tested out collages within group chats. This is similar to Pinterest collage options which had stemmed from its Shuffles app. It gained traction with audiences last year and since them Pinterest has adapted collages into its main app.
With the traction of social function, even Meta has taken note of the same and created a clone. This will definitely be popular with users over the holiday period. IG has also come out with a new feature Add Yours template which would encourage participation during the holiday season.
A new feature has also been rolled out which is called the New Year font and Countdown text effect and new highlights for selected phrases in DMs and Notes so in case you are adding a note which says Happy New Year, you would be getting new purple highlighting in stream.
The whole list of phrases and terms has not been provided but basic holiday clichés. So now you can start the beginning of 2025 with additional features which could work even beyond the festive period.Seasonal Add Yours templates has been introduced and designed to prompt participation of user in holiday themed Stories trends. These templates let users create personalized recaps by sharing of their own photos and moments.
With this, users will now be able to share and capture their holiday moments in a fresh way. Tools range from Collages for Stories to seasonal templates and fonts which gives users perfect way for sharing their festive spirit and memories.
Various retailers would be looking to get IG influencers use stickers to help in promoting their offers and apps in lead up to big sales event. It has also been experimenting with a new secret sticker which only those can see who respond to Story with a message. It has also been working with a Music Pick sticker which would let respondents share their top tracks of the moment. These new stickers are apart from the latest updates which Instagram announced at its Instagram University event in New York last week which includes close friend groups, audio notes and new birthday reminders.
Most of these features are included in enclosed group sharing which is a major trend in IG usage as users have started shifting away from public posting in favor of maintaining smaller group chats.
Instagram has been encouraging users to create visual recap of their year by sharing of favorite memories from 2024 in beautifully designed collage and it offers stylish way for showcasing it all.
Both Facebook and Instagram now feel quite different and for some users, this has made the app less engaging for most of the users, it has been seen their overall usage of each platform increasing even with fewer personal updates to check out.
This is expected to be the main push from Instagram as it heads for the holiday break when lot many users would be spending more time on their apps. If Instagram can add more ways for facilitating expanded engagement and get more people to share which would help them stay engaged with the app.
These features are now available in the latest version of the Instagram app and this is expected to boost social media engagement during the holiday season.
