: It’s not necessary to always follow trends, how to give a trend your own touch is the key: Niharika Pande, Meta #IndiaNEWS #Experts Speak In Conversation with Niharika Pande from Meta who gives

It’s not necessary to always follow trends, how to give a trend your own touch is the key: Niharika Pande, Meta #IndiaNEWS #Experts Speak
In Conversation with Niharika Pande from Meta who gives a run down on Instagrams new Following and Favorites feature and how users and creators can most the most out of the app.

Social Samosa sat down with Niharika Pande, Head of Creatives, Partnership and Community at Facebook (Meta) and had a chat on the whats and hows of Instagrams newly launched Following and Favorites feature, a rundown on some hidden features and how can you elevate your experience on the platform.

Whats New On Instagram?

Niharika explained that the current Instagram feed, which everyone is so familiar with is a ranked feed. Which in theory means that the posts one sees on their feed are related to whatever one likes, comments and saves. But with the new updates, give all the power back to the user.

First, the Following feature; where just like its name, the feed will be chronologically set and will only focus on accounts that you follow. Next comes Favorites, where if the user doesnt want to miss out on the content shared by a particular account, this feature will make sure to always include their posts in the users feed.

Niharika further added, With this update, its really coming back to the core of what the experience on Instagram should be which is that the user should have control over what they want to see. While the default is the rank feed, with this update, users get the option to swap in and out.

One request that Instagrams back office always heard from the users was to revive the way Instagram used to look back in the day meaning this feature. Although Instagram delivered what the audience demanded, they still think that the default rank feed is what works the best and drives the most engagement for the creators as well.

Hidden Gems On The App

Instagram constantly brings new features and updates to improve the user experience. But with the constant upgrading and renovating, some updates get lost in the bigger picture. To avoid being in the dark about these hidden gems, Niharika suggests,

Spending time on your settings. Theres a lot to explore in this tiny corner of the app. For eg. Your Activity will give the user a good look at how much time and where their time is being spent on Instagram.

Next would be the Live Experience. Where today, the user can add up to 4 people on their Live. Additionally, the Live section now has something called a moderator, who can moderate the whole Live experience. Along with it, the users can now post a coming up post rather than a story. Plus theres something called a Practice Room, where the user can have a trial Live before actually going Live, to get used to the A-Z of the live features.