How does instagram work

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Elise Moreau. Freelance Contributor. Elise Moreau is a writer that has covered social media, texting, messaging, and streaming for Lifewire. Her work has appeared on Techvibes, SlashGear, Lifehack and others. Facebook Twitter. Updated on September 12, Lisa Mildon. Lisa Mildon is a Lifewire writer and an IT professional with 30 years of experience. Her writing has appeared in Geekisphere and other publications. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn.

Article reviewed on Aug 14, Tweet Share Email 1, Instagram Basics. Posting on Instagram. Working With Followers. Engaging Users on Instagram. Using Instagram on Other Platforms. In This Article. An Intro to Instagram. Compatible Devices. Create an Account. Instagram as a Social Network. Apply Filters and Edit Posts. Share Your Posts. View and Publish Stories. What is an Instagram handle? What is an Instagram influencer? What does being shadow banned on Instagram mean?

Was this page helpful? Below the filter tray are two options: Filter and Edit. Flicking to Edit will allow you to fine-tune your image, from adjusting brightness and contrast to changing the structure, saturation, colour, and fade, among other options. You'll also be able to adjust a special effect called Lux by tapping the centralised icon above the image you're editing. Upon hitting next on the top-right of the Filters screen, you will get to a screen that'll let you share your photo or video to either all followers or a direct follower by toggling between the two options at the top of your screen.

This screen is where you can add captions, tag people, and tag your location, as well as choose if you want to share your post to any other social media outlets. Instagram integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr, meaning you'll be able to share across most of the popular social networks by just toggling each of them on or off.

Here's the deal: With Snapchat stories, you can broadcast multiple snaps aka videos and photos taken throughout the day, complete with overlays of doodles and stickers and filters and masks. This reel of snaps will disappear after 24 hours, thus maintaining Snapchat's ephemeral vibe. If you want to repopulate your story reel, just take more videos and photos and then broadcast them. Now, here's where Instagram comes in Instagram describes its Stories feature as something that lets you "share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile".

The feature basically enables you to share multiple photos and videos, and they appear together in a "slideshow format", which means a reel, like Snapchat. And, of course, these photos and videos will disappear. Instagram's Help Center has several step-by-step guides that explain everything you need to know about finding and posting Stories.

Pocket-lint also has an explainer feature here. Before we move on to the next section, we thought we should go over some of the more popular Instagram filters including the separate Lux effect and what they do to your photos and videos:. It's possible to switch between multiple accounts on Instagram. This is especially handy for those of you who run a personal account, along with a business account.

Instead of having to log out and log in to each account every time you want to browse or post new content, which you used to have to do, you can now switch between five accounts with a few simple taps. Enter the username and password of the account trying to add and that's it. To then switch between accounts, tap your username at the top of your profile and choose the account you want to switch to. If you want to save time and get straight to uploading a photo whenever you launch Instagram, just hold down the Camera tab on the menu bar.

From there, the camera roll should immediately open and let you select a photo. Gone are the days of typos and feeling embarrassed when you accidentally post a photo with "your" in the caption when you really meant to write "you're".

Instagram launched an update that enabled editing captions. Go to the post, then tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner, and select Edit. You'll then be able to edit the caption. As far as we can tell, people won't see how or even how many times you've edited the caption. This new feature is a much-welcomed change because we've all been in that situation where you spend 10 minutes editing the heck out of a photo, only to ditch the work altogether when something immediate comes up that needs your attention.

If you were desperate or had the time, you could use a workaround, such as screenshotting. Well, all that's a thing of the past because Instagram now prompts you to either save or discard your draft before you even leave the editing screen.

You can learn more about how the new feature works here. You can reply to a comment without having to enter the person's handle or tagging the person. Instead, select the comment, then swipe left, and click the grey arrow. The person's handle will then appear in the comment box.

While replying to a comment, you might've also seen the trash icon. It allows you to delete a comment. Go to the photo, click the comment icon, and swipe left on the comment to see and tap the trash can.

If you use Instagram's keyword moderation tool, you and your followers will no longer be able to see comments on your own posts that contain language you've deemed or Instagram has deemed offensive or inappropriate. You can learn more about the feature from here.

Instagram is a free social networking service built around sharing photos and videos. It launched in October on iPhone first, and became available on Android in April Facebook purchased the service in April and has owned it since. Like most social media apps, Instagram allows you to follow users that you're interested in. This creates a feed on your homepage, showing recent posts from everyone you follow. You can like posts, comment on them, and share them with other people.

In addition to posting regular photos and videos, which stay on your page permanently, Instagram also supports stories.

If you've used Snapchat, or most other social media platforms, you'll be familiar with these. Stories allow you to post many photos and video clips in a series. Anyone can view these for 24 hours, after which they expire. Reels are a lot like what you'll find on TikTok: short video clips that are easier to share and find than stories.

And IGTV is for longer-form video that you want to keep on your profile. Aside from all this, Instagram also supports direct messaging so you can chat with friends in private. You can also explore profiles to see what else you might have interest in.

The best way to understand more about how Instagram works is to start using it for yourself. To do this, you'll need to sign up for an account on Instagram's website , or by downloading Instagram for Android or Instagram for iPhone. You can also install Instagram for Windows 10 , which is basically a port of the mobile app. While Instagram has a desktop site, it's fairly limited. It's passable for browsing your feed, but Instagram is definitely a smartphone-focused service.

Check out your options for posting to Instagram using a computer if needed. When you sign up, you can do so through Facebook. Alternatively, provide your name, email address, and set a username and password. You can create multiple Instagram accounts , should you ever need to.

Let's take a quick tour through each of Instagram's major functions and pages. You'll learn how to access these features and what they do. Instagram isn't much fun without people to follow.

Hit the magnifying glass icon on the bottom bar and you'll open the Explore page. Here you'll see pictures and users Instagram thinks you might like, along with categories at the top you can use to see more on a specific topic.

Contact Upleap and learn how you can accelerate your Instagram success in no time! Check out your free trial today! How Does Instagram Work? Written by Rebekah Carter 30 th Nov 18 am. How does Instagram work? These days, it seems like practically everyone has heard of Instagram. Image Credit: Unsplash. Share us with your friends.