Meta Continues Copycat Streak With BeReal Clone On Instagram
Meta is on a hot streak of undesirable events, and the latest one screams desperation. That desperation is called Candid Stories, a new Instagram feature that is now rolling out to users. Meta has blatantly cloned BeReal, the viral social app that lets users click a photo from their phone's rear and front cameras, and then post it in a random time slot every day. Candid Stories work the same way as BeReal: All you need to do is open the Stories feature and launch the camera mode. Your phone will now capture a "bothie," which is essentially a snap of what's in your view, and a round insert in the top-left corner that captures your selfie view.
As a measure of privacy on Instagram, Candid Stories will only appear to your Instagram friends that have also posted candid stories. Once you post your first Candid Story, the Instagram app will start showing you a counter-notification that lets you know when it's time to post another one. However, if you're not much into posting Candid Stories, there's an option to disable it form the Settings menu. Meta is also testing an identical version for the Facebook app. BeReal won Apple's App Of The Year award for 2022, and has proved to be immensely popular among the young demographic. It only seems natural that Meta would want to capitalize on the hot new social trend, just the way it did with TikTok and Snapchat in the past.
There's a lot more in this features update
Instagram is also rolling out a new Notes feature, which is essentially like Stories, but in text form. Notes appear above the profile icon of your contacts in row at the top of the DMs section. Instagram has actually been experimenting with this feature for a while, and I found it to be quite convenient during the test phase. Posting a short "I'm busy" note was enough to let my friends know that I was busy and that they should postpone their plans of sending me a bajillion Reels.
Another neat feature that is "coming soon" to Instagram is Group Profiles, which essentially lets you create a profile jointly run by multiple accounts. Notably, content shared from a Group Profile will only appear to people in that group, and won't appear publicly to followers of each member in that group. In a nutshell, this seems like a good way to share a fun post with all your friends, instead of sending to separately via direct messages.
Instagram already allows collaborative posts, and this seems like a natural evolution. Instagram is also adding a new "Add Yours" feature for Stories. The idea is to let people post a story, and then nominate their friends to join the chain for posting similar content. I can already imagine this as a potent weapon to see everyone's pet pictures in Stories, without having to ask them.