At its F8 developer conference, Facebook made a bunch of exciting announcements relating to Augmented Reality and even for Messenger, however, another really interesting announcement was regarding Instagram. Already rolling out in some regions, the latest update for Instagram will let you access some of its features without any internet connection. No, we are not talking about queuing up a photo at the top which is already there, this is more like an offline mode.
As per Facebook (who owns Instagram), users can now like or leave a comment on a post, Follow – Unfollow users. The next time you connect your device to the internet, all the actions done in offline mode will be executed automatically. This is quite similar to what has been there on WhatsApp where we can just write in a message and its gets delivered as soon as we connect to the internet. Further, Instagram will also pile up the cache which will allow users to access frequently opened profiles and the last opened ‘Explore’ tab. So the next time you have a poor or no internet connection, you don’t have to stare that annoying white screen endlessly. The update is currently being rolled out for Android only and we expect it to roll out for iOS soon.
The reason why Facebook is pushing offline accessibility suddenly is because about 80 percent of Instagram’s 600 million users are outside the United States, as per TechCrunch. Moreover, given a lot of countries, including India, doesn’t rank up in terms of internet connectivity, Facebook or rather Instagram need to serve those with poor internet connections. A great example of such concept is Facebook Lite which is a light version of Facebook and uses a lot less internet allowing people to serve across the social network platform. Further, this might be a great move to take on Snapchat as well because Instagram is currently being considered a worthy contender to Snapchat with its Instagram Stories and having a Lite version or offline mode, in this case, will surely bump up the user base.