Instagram Creator Lab Launched in India; Company Rolls Out New Story Features, Birthday Notes

Instagram on Thursday announced the launch of its Creator Lab in India at an event in Mumbai. The creator-focused educational resource will feature popular Instagram users from India and will be available in English and Hindi, with captions in five other languages. The Meta-owned firm also announced the launch of three new features on the photo and video sharing platform, aimed at increasing engagement on the platform via stories, direct messages (DMs) and notes — while also highlighting recent features that are already rolling out to users.

Instagram Creator Lab Launched in India

Building on the company's Born on Instagram programme that was launched in 2019, the Instagram Creator Lab will offer resources for content creators in India, according to the company. Content for the Creator Lab will be sourced from other creators, according to details shared by Paras Sharma, Director (Global Partnerships), Meta India.

The Instagram Creator Lab will include content from 14 creators across the country. They will share insights and strategies for aspiring creators, and the content will be available in Hindi and English, while Meta will also provide captions in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

Instagram Launches Comments in Stories, Birthday Notes and Cutouts in DMs

The first feature launched by Instagram on Thursday is called Comments in Stories and it allows one to comment on a user's stories, which are visible to other users. The company recently allowed users to leave comments on posts and reels that would only be visible to their followers, and the Comments in Stories feature expands on the same functionality.

Instagram Comments in Stories and Birthday Notes features

These comments will disappear 24 hours after the story was posted, according to the company, according to the company. However, if a user adds a story to their Highlights, then the comments will remain visible. Instagram also says it will allow users to turn off the comments feature on stories. Gadgets 360 was able to confirm that this feature has already rolled out to some staff members.

Instagram recently rolled out the ability to use cutouts of images as stickers on stories, and the same functionality is now being expanded to chats on the platform. Users will soon be able to send cutouts of images from their camera roll as stickers in DMs, according to the company.

Another feature called Birthday Notes will soon be rolled out to users on Instagram, and it is aimed at increasing engagement on the platform. Users who opt in to use the feature will see a small hat icon appear in the Instagram Notes section on their birthday. According to Instagram, Birthday Notes will use the same privacy settings as regular Instagram notes, which means that users will probably want to configure these settings before enabling this feature.