Instagram Debuts ‘Notes’, Which Looks Suspiciously Like Twitter

Instagram has never been one to shy away from following in the footsteps of its rivals—from “borrowing” Stories from Snapchat to looking to TikTok for Reels and replicating BeReal with ‘Dual’ mode.

 
Now it’s bringing an all-new feature known as ‘Notes’ that allows you to post text updates onto your account. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the same basis Twitter goes by.
 
Notes allow users to update their friends and followers with text and emojis, a departure from Instagram’s long-standing involvement with images and videos.
 
Users can leave notes through their inbox by selecting their mutuals or people in their ‘Close Friends’ list. After which, they can type out a simple sentence or paragraph—nothing more than 60 characters—which will be viewed at the top of their following inboxes for 24 hours.

Anyone who replies to the note will have their message sent as a Direct Message.
 
Meta has actually been thinking about releasing Notes for a while now, and it has even had it in testing for some months. The company had even been debating starting an all-new app to outpace Twitter. The tool’s debut during an unstable time for the Elon Musk-run social network is well noted.

Notes do differ significantly from Twitter’s real-time feed. That being said, Instagram is continuing its trend of taking popular features of other platforms and putting its twist on them.
 
 
 
[via TechCrunch and Meta, images via Meta]