Instagram Updates: Collab, Calendar Tool, & more

Instagram has launched a series of updates including the introduction of a new format called Collab enabling co-author posts, a new tool for checking insights and more.

Along with Collab, and the insights overview tool, Instagram also rolled out translations in Stories as a part of its latest updates.

Calendar Tool

Brands, creators, and certain types of accounts that have the functionality of checking performance metrics can set the dates to the desired duration in the Insights Overview tab in the dropdown menu on the top left corner.

The calendar tool that lets users check insights according to custom dates has been updated with a new metric and now instead of the last 30 days, users can now check a timeframe of 60 days i.e. double the period already available. It would also be expanded to 90 days in the coming months.

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Collab

The new tool rolled out in the testing phase globally will enable two accounts to collaborate on a single Reel or Feed Post. A collab post will show up on both profile grids, and be shared with both sets of followers.

Both accounts' or co-authors' names would appear above the post in Feed or in the header of the Post or Reel. Likes, Views, Comments count, and more of such metrics would be the same on both accounts.

A user can invite another account to be a co-author through the tagging screen by clicking 'Invite Collaborator" instead of 'Tag People', once they accept the invite the post would be visible as co-authored.

The genesis of this new feature seemingly comes out of the functionality of an experimental app of the same name. Collab for music artists, first launched in May as an invite-only beta by the Facebook NPE (New Product Experimentation) team, was later launched in iOS App Store (in the US).

Users could collaborate with others for original music can browse through the feed of collabs, each collab features 15-second independent videos playing in sync. Given the popularity of Remix in Reels, and now with the launch of co-authored posts, we may see more of such abilities being launched on Instagram to facilitate creator collaborations or paid partnerships with brands.

Translation In Stories

Text or Captions in Stories will now show a 'See Translation' prompt if the language is different than the user's default. The user can tap the prompt to see the translation. The feature is rolling out in 90+ languages.