At a recently held event in Mumbai, Instagram announced the official launch of its Creator Lab in India. Available in Hindi and English with captions in five more languages, the creator-focused educational resource will feature well-known Indian Instagram users. Along with introducing three new features to boost user interaction on the photo and video-sharing platform through stories, direct messages (DMs), and notes, the Meta-owned company also introduced some new features that have already begun to roll out to users.
Also Read: Instagram Introduces New Fonts, Text Animations and More Features; Here's How You Can Use Them
The Instagram Creator Lab will provide resources for aspiring content creators in India, building on the company's Instagram programme, which debuted in 2019. Paras Sharma, Director (Global Partnerships), Meta India, has disclosed that content for the Creator Lab would come from other creators. The Creator Lab from Instagram will feature content from 14 creators around the country. The content will be available in Hindi and English, with subtitles in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu provided by Meta. They will additionally offer ideas and strategies for potential creators.
Also Read: Instagram Now Let’s You Put 20 Images in a Single Post, Here’s How to Do it
Instagram's latest feature, Comments in Stories, was unveiled on Thursday and allows users to leave comments on stories posted by others. The company previously enabled users to put comments on posts and reels that were only visible to their followers, and the Comments in Stories feature builds on that functionality.
Instagram says these comments will disappear 24 hours after the story is posted. However, the comments will still be available if a user adds a story to their Highlights. Additionally, Instagram claims to let users disable the story comments feature. The platform also introduced the ability to utilise image cutouts as stickers on stories, and the same feature is now being expanded to chats on the app. According to the company, users will soon be able to send cutouts of images from their camera roll as stickers via DMs.
To boost interaction on the social platform, Instagram users will soon have access to a new tool called Birthday Notes. On their birthday, users who want to use the feature will see a tiny hat icon appear in the Instagram Notes section. Birthday Notes will likely utilise the same privacy settings as standard Instagram notes, thus users should probably adjust these settings before turning on this feature.
