With today’s update to the Instagram app, the photo sharing platform is improving search and discovery to compete with other real-time sharing platforms. Both upgraded features have a strong focus on time and place as the Facebook-owned service looks to compete with Twitter in showing real-time information.
The Explore tab, which is accessible before typing on the search page, will now feature trending tags and a rotating selection of curated posts, such as Glimmering Islands, Extreme Athletes and Ancient Ruins.
Updates to search include the ability to narrow results to people, tags and places. When searching for a place, users will get a selection of top pictures, as well as a list of the most recent posts from that location. In that way, it competes with some of the geographic features of Trover, our current GeekWire App of the Week.
This is part of a broader trend. Twitter recently announced that it is rolling out features to make it easier to track events. The curated tweets and Instagram’s curated photo collections can both be used to track events ranging from the Oscars to protests over police brutality. Snapchat has led the way on curated sharing with their Live Stories, which collect “snaps” from live events around the world, but often focus on less newsworthy events.
The Instagram update is out now for iOS and Android in the U.S. and will come to other countries soon.
