Facebook-owned Instagram will now notify users in case their friends screenshot their direct messages (DM). According to Mashable, these notifications are only for the new disappearing message feature.
The new update is similar to features offered by rival Snapchat.
A user can use the new feature by swiping right into the camera to take photo/video, and then tapping the arrow to send it privately.
“Unlike other messages in Direct, these photos and videos disappear from your friends’ inboxes after they have seen them. And you will see if they replayed it or took a screenshot,” Instagram says.
Users can also take a screenshot of their feed. In this case, a new window pops down informing, “You can share this post with your friends” and allowing users official ways to share their image.
Instagram, the photo and video sharing service owned by Facebook, came into existence in 2010. It allows users to take pictures and share them either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through several other social networking platforms. Instagram was created by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom as a free mobile app in 2010. The app quickly became popular among internet users, and was able to create an active user base of over 100 million by April 2012. In 2012, Facebook bought it for about US$1 billion in cash and stock. Since then, the app has grown exponentially, due to ease of sharing images. In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook grew only by 3%. In the past two years, Instagram’s user base has more than doubled. It reached 400 million monthly active users in September 2015, and since then it had added another 100 million monthly active users by June 2016. These users were added at a faster rate compared to the previous 100 million users.
Smartphone users can install Instagram through the Apple App Store and Google Play. It can be run on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Windows 10 devices and Android handsets. Third-party Instagram apps are also available for BlackBerry 10 and Nokia-Symbian Devices.
In June 2016, Instagram hit a new milestone in its history by crossing the 500 million user mark. Instagram also revealed that over 80% of its users were based outside the U.S.
In June 2013, Instagram introduced video feature allowing prerecorded clips of 15 seconds and of square standard definition resolution to be shared. Later versions however added support for resolutions of up to 1080p and longer recording times for prerecorded or disappearing live videos. Instagram’s version 7.5 was released in August 2015 which allowed users to upload media captured in any aspect ratio.
