Instagram is just spoiling us with their new features lately. What a time to be alive.
Just last week, Instagram released face filters, attracting Snapchat users everywhere. Now we don’t have to save our Snaps and post them on Instagram. Now that our flower crown filters are on point, it’s time to find the perfect selfie locations. Instagram’s newest features are their location and hashtag stories on the app’s Explore page. In short, the curated stories are algorithmically compiled based on where you are in real-time.
Sound a little confusing? Let’s break it down. Imagine you decide to visit New York City for an exciting night out, but you’re unfamiliar with the popular restaurants and bars. Close your Yelp app now. Instagram’s location stories lets users browse other people’s stories in real-time and find places that are good for their trip. Maybe you want to find the perfect place to shoot a selfie? With location stories, you can find where other people took their photos and filter by hashtags.
“From discovering new parts of your own city to jogging alongside the #fromwhereirun community all around the world, location and hashtag stories help you share these experiences as they unfold,” Instagram wrote on their official blog page.
So, how do you use this wonderful feature? All you have to do is add a public story to your IG account, tag it with a location or hashtag story and then post. Once it’s posted, you’ll be able to see how many people saw your stories in the larger public story. Since it’s public, make sure it’s appropriate for everyone to see. No need to ruin the feature for everyone else by posting nudes, after all.
If you want to find public stories, all you have to do is look up a specific location and see if it has a public story available. In this aspect, it’s much more useful than Snapchat’s rather limited search engine.
Maybe it’s high time I start using Instagram for a change…