Next time you use your phone to Instagram another flawless pic (or, if you're not Beyonce, to give your friend's cousin's engagement photo an obligatory 'like') you might be surprised by an expanded set of search options.
An Instagram update announced today allows users to relate to more content in real time. The Explore page, which was previously a gallery of photos liked by followers and friends, has been revamped to better display trending topics and hashtags. A new feature called Places Search will also let 'grammers search photos by location.
Kevin Systrom, the chief executive and co-founder of Instagram, told The New York Times that today's update is all about making Instagram more conducive to sharing live reactions and experiences. Wired, however, suggests a more direct motivation to the enhanced explore features: Twitter.
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Instagram is looking to outdo Twitter — to become the first destination for anyone who wants to document or surface news and information. Instagram is roughly the same size as Twitter in terms of number of users. And those users do the same thing: log life experiences as they happen. But to date, Twitter has been a better outlet for news, because it has a more robust search engine and features that better surface relevant information. While photographers may post 70 million photos daily on Instagram, it's been tough to figure out where the important ones are. In other words, everyone knows there's a party, but no one can give you the address. [Wired]
We'll soon see if Instagram can deliver.