Instagram, like the other social media giants, have be known for their game-changing updates, only this isn’t one of them. Instead, the Gram is playing catch up with the others, as it’s finally introducing the “Active Now” feature. Now, this isn’t really a bad thing. The Facebook owned company originally was created to share photos so such a feature really wasn’t necessary.
As Instagram begins to focus more on the communication side of things, features like this will be more important. Through their new update the company is,
“making it easier to connect with friends on Instagram by showing you when they’re available to chat.”
They are doing this by showing you a green dot next to your profile photo. The dot will be seen in various locations within the app such as your Direct Messages Inbox, your Friend List, and your Recents List when you share a post from feed. There are a couple catches however, as you will only see the active status for friends who follow you or people who you have DM’d previously. You can also hide your status as well as turn off the feature in the settings. This would make it so you cannot see when your friends are active in the app. The new feature can be seen in action below. For more information check out their blog here.
