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Instagram Gains Status Dots to Let You Know When Friends Are Online

Thursday July 19, 2018 4:48 PM PDT by Juli Clover

Instagram today announced the launch of a new feature that's designed to let you know when your friends are active on the social network. When a friend is online, their profile picture will be accented with a green dot in various places within the app.

You'll see the green dot in the Direct inbox and in your friends list when you share a post from the feed. Dots will be displayed for friends who follow you or people you have previously spoken to in Direct.

If desired, you can hide your own status and turn off the ability to see when your friends are active in the settings section of the Instagram app.

Instagram says this new update is meant to make it easier to connect with friends over direct messages for more realtime conversations. The dots are rolling out to Instagram users today.

Instagram can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Tag: Instagram

Top Rated Comments

martyjmclean

78 months ago

How to turn off this?

It literally tells you in the article.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

riverfreak

78 months ago

...
Instagram says this new update is meant to make it easier to connect with friends over direct messages for more realtime conversations. The dots are rolling out to Instagram users today.
... (https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/19/instagram-online-status-indicator/)

Uh, right. No, it’s meant to increase user engagement and the opportunity for more ad placements by feeding a generalized sense of anxiety and FOMO.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

martyjmclean

78 months ago

I’ve had this all year. I turned it off though, they were annoying.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

thettareddast

78 months ago

imagine paying a cto, president of engineering, vp of engineering, a bunch of product managers and engineers to build and deliver..... a colored status indicator.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

haruhiko

78 months ago

How to turn off this?

Edit: just found out that I have already turned off the 'feature', thanks.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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