Instagram Reportedly Testing 'Regram' Feature For Sharing Other People's Posts

Instagram still doesn’t have a feature in its app that allows users to “regram” public posts and share them in their own feed. However, a new report claims that Instagram is actually testing its sharing feature right now, but there’s no information yet on when it will be available to users.

The new Instagram feature is allegedly known internally as “seamless sharing,” according to The Verge. The new feature is said to be located inside the menu tthat can be accessed by tapping the “…” icon on the top right corner of a public post. There should be a new “share to feed” option in this menu.

The Verge said that it was able to obtain two screenshots of what reshared posts will look like and one of them is from a business account. When a user shares a post from another person, it will appear in the feed with the username and photo of the user who originally published it. Currently, it appears as though that posts can only be reshared twice.

It’s being speculated that the new feature might just be limited to posts published by business pages at launch. It’s possible that Instagram will do this to avoid the spread of misinformation, which has been a huge issue on Facebook. In its current state, the feature was described by The Verge as looking “extremely rough,” which may indicate that it’s still very early in its development. Like all other “working in progress” projects, it’s also possible that Instagram could cancel it even before its release.

Introducing the ability to reshare public posts to the Instagram feed is something that a lot of users have been requesting and the demand has spawned third-party apps that offer “regram” features. Twitter already has retweets, while Facebook has been allowing sharing posts for a long time now. Adding a native reshare feature on Instagram just seems to make a lot of sense since the company's app already allows users to share other people's Instagram Stories.

In related news, the company has now added GIF support for Direct Messages. Users will be able to access GIFs by tapping on the new GIF button in the message composer bar. Tapping on the GIF button will bring up a library of trending GIFs from GIPHY and there’s an option to search for GIFs.

“You can also add an element of surprise by sending a random GIF. After you type in the search bar, simply tap 'random' to send a random GIF associated with what you’ve searched,” Instagram said in a blog post. “GIFs in Direct are available today in the latest version of Instagram for both iOS and Android.”