Deep inside the hearts of many people on social media, there is that pleasure of lurking.
One of the blessings of social media networks, is that they allow users to follow others, and even stalk them. It can be fun, challenging and even make us feel that guilty-pleasure of the "risky" behavior. That is because the last thing a stalker is expecting, is being caught red-handed.
And on Instagram, it seems like lurking has become a bit more difficult.
The popular photo and video sharing platform has previously introduced a feature which revealed when contacts were last active. Based on that iteration, Instagram is building a functionality to enhance it with status indicators that tell whether friends are online.
At the Direct messaging section of the app and contact list, users can see green dots next to their contacts, which indicate that they are presently online.
The green dot is like a more visual representation of the earlier feature which shows whether a person was active, or had been recently.
According to Instagram, this is meant to make it easier to connect with people.
Instagram further clarifies that "You will only see status for friends who follow you or people who you have talked to in Direct." So this is a good thing for those who extensively use Instagram’s DMs for chatting with their contacts.
But for those who prefer a calmer, less real-time experience, or want to keep on lurking and stalking, they can disable it from the 'Activity Status' inside the Instagram's Settings menu. The feature is set to on by default, and with a toggle, it can be turned off.
To be fair, Instagram won't allow users to see others' status when they're not showing their own.
The status dot doesn't change Instagram, and some even don't see it as a feature at all. However, some people didn't like it.
In a way that Instagram wants to be a place where users can do and see more things, it follows Facebook's steps in how it plays with its products.
With the green dots status, Instagram hopes that users will use its DM feature more often, rather than hopping over to Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to have those conversations. It's ironic since all three of these services are Facebook subsidiaries.
The last time Instagram users were really displeased, was when Instagram started using algorithms to show contents on users' feeds, instead of showing them in chronologically. Over the years, Instagram users have mostly begged Facebook as Instagram's parent company to not mess up with Instagram experience.
Instagram was once a peaceful place with no "Facebook" thingies wandering around its systems. But no, Instagram is after all Facebook's. So, Facebook also wants Instagram to be pretty much like itself.
The "Facebookification of Instagram" continues. And this is something inevitable as Instagram becomes one of the most popular social media where people are spending a lot more time on it.