Instagram, the Facebook-owned social media network most famous for its ease of use when it comes to sharing pictures has announced that its link stickers, which allows users to include hyperlinks in Stories in stickers will now be available to everyone.
This comes after Instagram started testing this feature back in June, but till now, it was limited to only verified accounts or accounts with a large following.
According to the platform, link stickers will be useful for every kind of user, be it a business linking its product to writers sharing their content.
How to Use Link Stickers on Instagram?
Instagram does however mention that users can benefit from link sharing for better engagement, adding that users sharing misinformation or hate speech will lose access to the feature.
When it comes to the usage, to add a link, users need to go to the sticker tool present on the top navigation bar that appears after uploading content to the story. Then the user needs to tap the “Link” sticker and enter the URL of their content or product.
Back in June, Instagram said that it intends to keep this feature for stories only, with no plans to bring it to the main IG feed or other parts of the app, which remains the case today.
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This Link sticker feature replaces the older swipe up method which was used to share links earlier from external pages. The latter was discontinued back in August, but now, with the link sticker, it is much easier than ever before to share and use links on the platform that is home to many users.
What Else Has the Platform Announced Recently?
Apart from this, earlier this month, after two years of long preparation, Facebook announced on October 1 that its two mobile apps, Instagram and Messenger, now support cross-application chat functions.
Facebook said that users can manually turn on this feature. In fact, 70% of users on Instagram can already enable the function of chatting with Messenger users.  Currently, the global monthly active users of Instagram are more than 1 billion.
Messenger is an instant messaging app developed by Facebook itself. At present, the global monthly active users exceed 1.3 billion. These two apps, together with Facebook itself, are one of the most popular social apps in the world.
This cross-application chat function also supports cross-application communication between group members. Users can use custom themes, chat backgrounds, and use custom emoticons. In addition, this update also provides group voting and also adds astrological-style emoticons.
