Instagram Is Getting Extra Social With a Map for Friends and Reposts

Instagram desires to be extra … social.

The Meta-owned platform introduced on Wednesday that it’s rolling out three new options in an effort to assist its customers higher join with their pals.

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri stated in a video posted to the app on Wednesday that the corporate desires “Instagram to be not just a lean-back experience that is just fun and entertaining, but also a participatory one.”

One of Instagram’s new options geared toward serving to folks join with their pals is a map the place you possibly can share your location. The map will present the place you have been final lively on Instagram. And sure, that does sound quite a bit like Snapchat’s Snap Map (and it would not be the primary time Instagram’s ripped a web page out of Snapchat’s playbook).

The new map function will probably be accessible in Instagram’s direct messaging (DM) inbox. The firm has dramatically expanded its DM options previously 12 months or so, the place the majority of the app’s social interactions really happen.

Sharing places with family and friends has turn out to be commonplace for younger folks — particularly Gen Z — with apps like Apple’s Find My Friends being a go-to for the era. Meanwhile, new startups are additionally making an attempt to faucet into the social mapping craze, equivalent to Bump, a French app from Amo, which was based by the previous Zenly crew (a social mapping startup that was acquired by Snapchat in 2017).

Don’t fret if sharing your location on Instagram makes you need to run for the hills. You need to choose in to sharing your location with folks, and you’ll select who you share that location with (equivalent to solely followers you comply with again, your “Close Friends” checklist, or a choose few). Parents even have management over location sharing for teen accounts, Instagram stated in a weblog submit.

Instagram’s map is offered within the US and a handful of world markets beginning Wednesday.

Reposts are lastly right here

Instagram introduced two different options on Wednesday: reposts of reels and feed posts, and a worldwide enlargement of its “Friends” tab.

Mosseri stated in the identical video that reposts have been a “request for many years,” including that the rationale Instagram is lastly introducing reposts is that the feed itself is already comprised of beneficial content material from accounts folks do not comply with.

Instagram joins rival TikTok, which launched a repost function again in 2022.

Instagram can be increasing the “Friends” tab for reels, which can now present reels that pals have both commented on, appreciated, reposted, or posted themselves.

Users will be capable to begin conversations with their pals utilizing the “reply bar,” which triggers a DM. Instagram launched extra privateness instruments for its pals tab as nicely, together with the power to choose out by hiding your likes, feedback, and reposts from pals, or muting that content material from folks you comply with.

The pals feed has already been rolled out within the US, and is now increasing globally.

Mosseri stated this function is “a way to explore your interests and your friends’ interests” and in addition “get to know a little bit more about” these pals. In addition to Instagram being entertaining, Mosseri stated he desires the platform to be someplace customers “actually engage with and connect with the people that you care about.”

Just a number of months in the past, whether or not Instagram was extra of an leisure platform slightly than a social community was entrance and heart at Meta’s antitrust trial introduced by the Federal Trade Commission.

One slide from Meta’s opening assertion on the trial revealed that simply 7% of the time spent on Instagram in 2025 was spent viewing content material from pals.

Perhaps Instagram desires to show that round.