Instagram has gone the way of Whatsapp by introducing a feature that allows you to see your followers’ activity status so that you can chat with them. If you are one of those that prefer it like it was with BBM when your online status remained unknown to your friend, you may have a reason to raise an eyebrow over this one as it also shows your activity status to those you have followed, but not to worry as the feature can be turned off.
The Facebook-owned social media outfit introduced its newest update on Thursday. It features a way for Instagram users to see when their followers are online or offline. This is however, not new to users who are already on Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Introducing the feature, the company noted that “When your friends are active on Instagram, you’ll see a green dot next to their profile picture in various spaces within the app, including the Direct inbox and your friend list when you share a post from feed.”
The feature will only allow a user to see the online or offline status of users who have followed them as well as those they have sent direct messages to. However, for users who may not want to be seen online, Instagram has also made it easy to turn off the online status but that also means such a user will not be able to see the online status of their followers; similar to how it works on Whatsapp.
Explaining why the feature was introduced, Instagram stated that “DMing friends and connecting over the content you love is more fun when you know your friends are there to see it. This update gives you the ability to have more of those realtime conversations while giving you the control to hide your status altogether.”
Over the last few months, Instagram has rolled out several features, among them is the one that allows you to remove followers even when your account is in public.
How to disable Instagram activity status
Once logged into Instagram:
- Click on settings, next to edit profile
- Scroll down and click on activity status
- Turn off activity status