Thursday, April 12, 2018

Instagram letting users download data, unveiling other features

Does your organization have great photos on Instagram that could be used for other PR efforts?

Until now, Instagram hasn’t offered tools to download photos from its database, forcing users to share a given Instagram post or find other visuals for their campaigns. The company says it is developing a data download tool, but it has been opaque about what data will be portable.

TechCrunch wrote:

Instagram has historically made it very difficult to export your data. You can’t drag, or tap and hold on images to save them. And you can’t download images you’ve already posted. That’s despite Instagram now being almost 8 years old and having over 800 million users. For comparison, Facebook launched its Download Your Information tool in 2010, just six years after launch.

We’re awaiting more info on whether you’ll only be able to download your photos, videos, and messages; or if you’ll also be able to export your following and follower lists, Likes, comments, Stories, and the captions you share with posts. It’s also unclear whether photos and videos will export in the full fidelity that they’re uploaded or displayed in, or whether they’ll be compressed.

Many might be excited by the option to use their old photos, but some question just where—outside of Instagram—organizations or individuals are supposed to post their photos.

Gizmodo wrote:

Ideally, portability lets users control their own data and move freely to competitors’ sites. But that poses the question: Who is Instagram’s competition? Flickr? Google photos? And who is Facebook’s competition? Portability is useful if you want to quit Instagram, but if you want another place to share photos among a vibrant, robust audience, there aren’t many choices.

Instagram has come under increased scrutiny for its ties to parent company Facebook.

Bloomberg wrote:

Facebook has boosted Instagram where convenient—in conversations with advertisers, for example—but otherwise hasn’t done a lot of co-branding, keeping it separate in the minds of consumers and lawmakers. The majority of Americans don’t know about Instagram’s affiliation, according to a poll last year by Reticle Research and the Verge. On LinkedIn, when employees change jobs from Facebook to Instagram, they list Instagram as a separate company.

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal spiraled out of control, it touched Instagram only briefly, in tweets from Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla Inc. CEO. Musk said he shut down his Facebook page and the pages of his companies, becoming the highest-profile businessperson to embrace a budding #DeleteFacebook movement. Some of his followers asked, what about Instagram? Instagram was “borderline” but “probably okay,” Musk tweeted, “as long as it stays fairly independent.”

Instagram has launched several features in recent days as it tries to rise above Facebook’s ongoing PR crisis. One receiving plenty of buzz is portrait mode.

TechCrunch reported:

Instagram is one-upping Apple with a portrait mode feature that runs on a wider variety of phones and works with video, not just photos. Last month, TechCrunch reported about a Focus feature buried in Instagram’s code, which began publicly testing a week later. Now Instagram is rolling out Focus, which blurs the background while keeping someone’s face sharp for a stylized, professional photography look. “Focus mode leverages background segmentation and face detection technology,” an Instagram spokesperson told me when asked how it works without the need for dual cameras.
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Another feature coming to Instagram is the “mentions sticker,” a clone of Snapchat’s QR code.

TechCrunch continued:

Meanwhile, Instagram is starting to roll out Mentions stickers that make it easy to tag friends in a Story with a stylized graphic instead of just text. Instagram tested these last month, but now they’re becoming available to all iOS users. Just like adding emoji to photos and videos, you can select the Mention sticker, use the typeahead to find a friend’s username and tag them in a resizable sticker. That lets people tap through to view their profile, and generates a notification to the tagged user.

The feature could be useful in branding:

TechCrunch mused:

Nametags could make it easier for people to visually promote their Instagram account. It could make it simple to follow a friend you just met by having them open their Nametag and then you scanning it. Meanwhile, businesses and social media stars could post their Nametag across other social media handles, print it onto posters or handbills or even make merchandise out of it.

What do you think of Instagram’s changes, PR Daily readers? Which seem most viable for marketing and branding efforts, and why?

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