Finally, Instagram users can do something they’ve been requesting for years: editing captions of their images.
The social platform rolled out an update on Monday that included the ability to tweak photo captions after they’ve been initially posted.
Autocorrect, fast typing, and attempts to “live-gram” events in real-time had led to many typos among users, leading to a particularly frustrating experience. This forced users to issue corrections via a comment, or to repost the asset entirely – neither of which, of course, was an optimal experience.
In a blog post, Instagram wrote: “this has been one of the top requests that we’ve heard from the community, and we’re excited to finally bring it to you.”
“The ability to correct photo captions is a big win for Instagrammers,” asserted Peg Fitzpatrick, the social media strategist and formerly Head of Social Strategy for Canva, the leading online visual creation platform. “I’m sure I’m not the only person whose had to delete a post and retype it. I hope that they continue to innovate a bit more and add some enhanced features around hashtags.”
In order to edit a caption, you simply tap the menu button […] beneath a post, and select edit. Captions that have been edited will be noted as having been edited via a small note that appears when a user goes to view the comments section.
In addition, Monday’s update added new recommendations to Instagram’s Explore menu, making finding new accounts to follow a simpler process by being split into two tabs, Photos and People. The People tab, new to Instagram, shows recommendations of accounts to follow, some of which will be individuals you’re associated with on other social platforms. A preview of these individuals’ recent Instagram posts lets you decide whether to follow them or not. The Photos tab remains similar to Instagram’s old Explore menu in that it includes photos (and videos) that are popular among your followers, as well as very hot posts from Instagram at large.
“It’s almost funny to think that they’ve taken this long to decide to use a magnifying glass for the icon,” says Kate Haberbusch, Social Media Manager at NYC-based Homepolish. “It reminds you that good UX is constantly iterative and Instagram, although being one of the largest social networks, needs to adapt for their users.”
How can brands take advantage of these updates? According to some, the Explore feature can be a major boon to brands. “By adding the visual element to the People tab and using some strategy, brands can tell a mini-story or otherwise provide users more reason to follow them,” says noted digital strategist Gary J. Nix. “Visual story telling is a big deal and whether it’s through stunning individual images or a small, smartly crafted mosaic, this part of the update has given brands another opportunity to give users what they want.”
On the surface, Monday’s updates could be considered incremental and minor, but will prove very useful to consumers and brands alike.