Augmented reality development
We can all witness how fast Instagram masks are developing in Stories. Companies started to look for promotional opportunities with the help of the masks.
The allowed dimensions and technical characteristics will improve. As a result, we will get genuine augmented reality, impressive games, and educational content with the masks. In some time, it will be possible to build routes with the help of the masks. Instagram develops this format towards maximum interaction and provides an opportunity for third-party developers.
Feed Transformation
It is already quite obvious that the feed will soon have a website format: there will be facts about the company and the key strategy elements. The main information will certainly be in Stories.
Stories are changing very rapidly: there are more options, stickers, interactive elements, and functionality. Stories are becoming the only dynamic format, while the feed is becoming more static.
Longreads
Longreads are likely to appear in the main feed. It has been discussed for a long time: such an option is currently being tested. It will allow posting much longer texts having more than 2200 characters. 2200 characters is a significant limitation that ties your hands and makes you look for different substitutions, such as writing in the comments, adding text screenshots to the carousel, etc. If longreads finally appear, it will be a big step for Instagram, as it will put it in line with all mass media players.
E-commerce development
In 2024 Instagram will pursue further development of window shopping and e-commerce. In some countries, Instagram already has shopping tags, so it is possible to order purchases through them.
Gradually, e-commerce will be complemented with other key features, techniques, payment methods, and advisory tools.
TikTok format
Instagram is planning to adopt some TikTok functions. New formats are being developed, aimed at replicating TikTok features, which will become a separate format of Instagram content.
Instagram as a mobile messenger
Nowadays it is quite common to chat on Instagram. It is too early to say that email is a thing of the past, but most people prefer chatting either on WhatsApp or on Instagram. However, until recently Instagram didn’t have any functionalities for it. It is still a big issue: you can’t sort your messages or create folders. But now we can see a tendency towards basic features, such as tagging. Editing tools have appeared, so there is a hope that in 2024 Instagram will finally realize and take measures to make Direct a serious messenger platform.
Desktop version
Instagram understood that it is not just a mobile app, but an enormous global social network that requires something bigger than a mobile app. That is why we can see how basic functions (Live Streams, Direct and comment management tools) are being transferred to the desktop version.
Facebook Integration
Facebook is an obsolete social network whose lifecycle is not over yet but is at its final stage. It is clear based on its development trend, audience loss, rate of activity, and many other parameters. Facebook as a corporation puts all its efforts into Instagram, this explains the fact that synchronization of these two platforms is very high on the agenda – Instagram Direct works on both platforms and there is a unified system of Stories.
Onlypult posts to all social media platforms, collects analytics data, allows creating micro landing pages and multiple links, and helps monitor what people say about your company.
Instagram Promotion
In 2024 Instagram is not a marketing tool anymore, it is marketing itself. For this reason, demand for Instagram as a marketing platform will carry on growing. It will result in the disappearance of free promotional tools. A serious player will require serious investment.
That is why it is important to master paid promotional tools, such as targeted advertising and blogger advertising.
Gradually Instagram will start controlling blogger advertising. There are already sponsored advertising and specialized formats – it clearly shows that Instagram wants to get a cut of the profits in this market. It is no wonder, as the marketplace is enormous and so are the budgets, but it doesn’t benefit Instagram and competes with targeted advertising.
The future of Instagram
A frequently asked question is: when is Instagram going to die? In the next five years, it is not worth thinking about it. In five years, there might be a paradigm shift, a new format might appear that will be built with augmented reality, or there will be a totally new format that will be more interesting for the audience. But for now – and for the next five years – Instagram will still be on-trend.
