Instagram tests favorites for sharing posts with limited group of friends

PanARMENIAN.Net - Instagram has begun testing a way to share posts with a more limited group of friends. Called favorites, the feature attempts to improve on earlier social network friend lists, encouraging users to post more often by giving them more control over their audience, The Verge says.

If it rolls out broadly, the feature could turn Instagram into the default place to share for more groups of friends — and reshape the social dynamics of Instagram in the process.

Before Instagram developed favorites, users tried to build versions of it for themselves. They created so-called “Finstagrams” — private Instagram accounts followed only a handful of their closest friends. Or they posted photos publicly and then deleted them after their close friends had acknowledged them with a like.

Each of these approaches had flaws of its own. Due to social pressures, the number of followers of a private account often swelled into the hundreds. People with private accounts often wind up using Instagram less as a result, the company says.

“People are trying to hack Instagram to create smaller audiences, and we’re trying to recognize that,” says Robby Stein, product lead at Instagram.

The company’s solution is favorites, a list of your closest friends that you can edit at any time. Instagram is testing the feature among a small percentage of users starting today, with an eye toward rolling it out more broadly in coming months. “We really want to get this right,” Stein says.