Instagram unveiled its Creator Lab in India on Thursday during an event held in Mumbai. This educational platform, tailored for creators, will showcase popular Instagram personalities from India and will be accessible in both English and Hindi, along with captions available in five additional languages. The initiative is part of Meta’s ongoing efforts to enhance user engagement on the photo and video sharing app, which also introduced three new features meant to foster interaction through stories, direct messages (DMs), and notes.
Launch of Creator Lab in India
Building on the success of the Born on Instagram program, introduced in 2019, the Instagram Creator Lab aims to equip content creators in India with valuable resources. Paras Sharma, Director of Global Partnerships at Meta India, revealed that the content produced for this lab will be sourced from Indian creators.
The Creator Lab will feature contributions from 14 diverse creators across the nation, who will share their expertise and strategies designed to inspire aspiring creators. The available content will be presented in Hindi and English, with additional captions provided in Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.
New Features: Comments in Stories, Birthday Notes, and DM Cutouts
Among the new features introduced by Instagram is the “Comments in Stories” functionality. This allows users to comment on a friend’s stories, with the comments visible to other followers. This feature extends the recent capability that permitted comments on posts and reels, now enabling similar engagement within stories.
Comments on stories will automatically vanish 24 hours after the story is posted. However, if a user saves a story to their Highlights, those comments will remain visible. Users will also have the option to disable comments on their stories. Reports confirm that this feature is already being tested by some Instagram staff.
In addition, Instagram is expanding its cutout sticker functionality, which allows users to create image cutouts for use in stories, now extending this feature to direct messaging. Users will soon have the ability to send these image cutouts as stickers in DMs.
Another noteworthy feature, “Birthday Notes,” is set to roll out to users aiming to heighten engagement. Users who activate this feature will notice a small hat icon in their Instagram Notes section on their birthday. Like regular Instagram notes, Birthday Notes will follow the platform’s standard privacy settings, prompting users to review their settings prior to activation.
