Instagram is testing a new feature that will quickly let you access your recently shared Reels. This makes it easier for users to reshare a Reel they liked to another friend at a later time.
A Turkey-based account called Dijital Ağlar shared a post about the feature. It indicated that Instagram is showing a row at the top of your DMs with the “Latest Shares” label. The screenshots posted by the account demonstrate that shared posts will also show avatars of the friends you shared a Reel with. If you share one short video multiple times, it will show it only once with the avatar of the friend you last shared it with.
Instagram is testing showing the latest posts you send to a friend as a preview.
cc/ @MattNavarra
(iOS – Latest version – Türkiye) pic.twitter.com/0dd27PODaH
— Dijital Ağlar (@dijitalaglar) March 5, 2023
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The company confirmed the development of this feature to TechCrunch in a statement.
“We’re rolling out improvements to how you can search for and rediscover Reels that were previously shared in messages,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. However, the company didn’t specify if this feature shows other non-Reels posts in the latest shares section. It also gave out no details about the rollout schedule.
It’s not really surprising to see that Instagram has not included other kinds of posts, as the company has been doubling down on short videos in the past few years. Last year, it announced that any video shorter than 15 minutes will be shared as a Reels post.
The idea behind this new test is to keep you and your friends sharing and viewing short videos regularly. You see a funny post, you share it with friends, and they open the post, and keep swiping up to view more, and they see more ads… you get the gist.
Last week, Meta announced that it is stopping the creator bonuses program for Reels as the company will focus on other avenues of monetization such as ad revenue sharing.
