Instagram Tests a New Way To Keep Tabs on Shared Content

This is interesting.

With more and more people sharing more and more content via DMs, Instagram is experimenting with a new “Social Library” section, where all of the posts and Reels that you’ve interacted with would be stored for easy access.

As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, the new “Social Library” element would list all of the posts that you’ve re-shared, Liked or bookmarked in the app, compiled into lists so that you can find them again more easily.

Which is a common headache. How many times have you remembered a meme someone sent you, but you can’t remember which chat it was in, or whether you sent it yourself? With this, you’d be able to more easily locate such, as it’ll be listed within this section, and filed under one of the tabs.

And sharing has become an increasingly common way that people interact in the app.

Back in 2022, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri noted that:

“Friends post a lot more to stories, and send a lot more DMs, than they post to Feed.”

Rather than using social media as a personal soapbox, more people are now using it as a discovery engine, with AI recommended content keeping people scrolling through their feeds for longer, and forwarding relevant posts to friends.

Memes are the way that many people communicate, rather than sharing their own updates, and it’s that connection which has facilitated a new wave of social media use, with both Facebook and Instagram seeing increases in usage as a result of its increase in recommended posts.

Again, it’s not about showcasing your own updates so much as connecting based on popular posts. And while people are still talking to each other via DM, sharing interesting posts is now well integrated into our interactive behavior, so much so that it’s likely a more dominant element.

Why the shift?

Well, I think a lot of people got sick of reading mundane updates, as well as staged, curated highlight reels of other people’s lives. Political division has also turned off a lot of users from sharing their opinions, and over time, the novelty of being able to share your perspective has been drowned out by these elements.

So people now post to smaller groups instead, and stay in touch via smaller group chats, where they can post more freely. And again, sharing interesting updates is a major part of that, which is why this update could be particularly beneficial.

There’s no word on this being tested in the live environment, and it may never actually see the light of day. But it makes a lot of sense.

We’ve asked Instagram for more info, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.