Instagram expands subscriber features to include DMs, Reels

By Anita George Published July 14, 2022

Instagram’s push for more original content on its platform now includes more options for its creators and their subscribers.

On Thursday, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced via a video posted to the same platform, the addition of four new subscriber benefits that IG creators can now offer their subscribers.

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These new subscriber benefits include subscriber-only chats with the creators, access to subscriber-only Reels and Posts, and a new Subscriber Home tab.

The subscriber-only chats are conducted via Direct Messaging (DMs) and these chats can support “up to 30 subscribers at a time.”

And in terms of exclusive content, Instagram is now allowing creators to produce subscriber-only Reels and Posts. This is in addition to IG’s initial rollout of its subscriber program earlier this year, in which creators were allowed to create subscriber-only Stories and Lives. This initial test also included badges for subscribers.

A new Subscriber Home tab on creators’ profiles will also aggregate all the subscriber-only content in one place. According to Mosseri’s video, the Subscriber Home tab should have a Crown-shaped icon.

Instagram’s recent focus on creators and original content isn’t particularly surprising and it seems to be right in line with Facebook and their parent company’s overall push to have its platforms keep up with its wildly popular competitor, TikTok.

Will Instagram be able to reach its goal of more original content on its platform? Time will tell. But for now, it’s will be interesting to see if these new features will help IG become a platform that produces more of its own content instead of just being another platform where TikTok videos are reshared.

Former Computing Writer

Anita George has been writing for Digital Trends' Computing section since 2018. So for almost six years, Anita has written…

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