Q. How do you improve Instagram’s share feature?

Describe the product

Instagram is a social media platform that allows users to share their photos/videos.

Share is a button that is shown on every post right next to the comment button. It allows users to share that post with someone else.

Currently, it allows three options:

• Share to Direct: Share with another Instagram user.
• Share via Email: Share the link via email
• Copy Link: Copy the post URL so that you can share it outside the app directly.

Possible reasons to improve

• Simplifying the UX from multi-step to 2 steps.
  • Here’s what they have to do today
    • Click on the share icon
    • Select from one of the options
    • Share to Direct
      • Select user(s) from the list
      • If not visible, search for them.
      • Send
    • Share via Email: Opens email app
      • Enter email-id to send to
      • Edit Subject and Body
      • Add context
      • Send
    • Copy Link:
      • Copies the link to clipboard
      • User has to close the app
      • Open the relevant app (Ex. WhatsApp)
      • Find the right user
      • Paste it
      • Send
  • Here’s the new flow:
    • Click on the share icon
    • The user list is shown to select from
      • Select user(s) from the list
      • If not visible, search for them.
      • Send
    • button is shown at the bottom of the modal to copy instead of sharing.
    • Share via email is removed.
    • Copy link as a top-level option is merged with Share to Direct. Now the user does not have to select from one of the three.
• Allowing users to add context to the shared link (Comments, Emojis, etc)
  • When the user selects “Share to Direct”, they can add some text to the link. This text will be shared below the link shared.
  • Here’s the new flow:
    • Select user(s) from the list
    • If not visible, search for them.
    • Hit Next
    • Add some text (optional) like you would in a Direct Message.
    • Send
• Adding direct share to other popular messaging platforms
  • When the user selects “Share”, WhatsApp as an option is shown directly.
  • This will allow our userbase to share content with someone who is not familiar with the network yet easily.

Evaluate solutions

Define metrics for measuring performance

• The time it took before/after to share a post with a frequent user
• The time it took before/after to share a post via copy link feature
• The number of times before/after users shared a post using the copy link feature.

Conclusion

What is Instagram ?

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Facebook.

What is the share feature?

Instagram share feature is the one that lets you share posts from other profiles with other instagram users or groups as a direct message or add those posts to your story which can be viewed by your followers.

Goal :

The goal is to increase engagement on the platform by allowing users to share more on instagram

Users of the Product

Individuals

Influencers/Celebrities

Brands

Pain-points/Needs of these users : – Users are looking to share anything that is funny or interesting.

1. The users may like a single post from someone else’s story and would want to share that instead of the entire story. Currently it is possible to share the entire story with someone as a direct message. The users may want to edit the image or video by adding some funny text and sharing on their story or feed.

2. The users may like a specific thread of comments and would want to share that thread along with the post.

For example, you like a specific thread of comments on your post and you want to share that with your followers.

3. There is no option to add multiple photos or videos as separate items from a post to your story.

 For example, you may have visited a new place with a friend and he has uploaded lots of images to Instagram. Now you want to share those images to your story for your followers to see.

4. There is no way a user can share messages received.

5. The user cannot share multiple different images at once with a given set of people.

Let’s prioritize them based on level of pain point and frequency.

1 > 5 > 3 > 2 > 4

Lets focus on 1,5 and 3 for solutions.

Improvements

1. One major improvement I would look at is allowing the user to keep adding images or videos to a collection and then give an option to share the entire collection with people as a direct message or add the collection to a story.

2. Provided a given user has provided permission to allow sharing of stories on feed or as a story, any other user should have an option to share items from any story as a direct message or as a part of his story.

For eg abhinavchitre has posted a story and added 10 items, another user garimachauhan should be able to share as a direct message or a story , any of those 10 items after adding necessary effects and filters with text.

3. When we share a post which has multiple pictures to our story, those pictures should get added as separate items. The user should be able to add text or filters or both to each one of them and share to their story.

4. User will have option to share messages which have been received

Prioritization

I would build them in this order : 2 > 1 > 3

How would you measure the improvements ?

Number of collections shared per user per day

Average number of items in a collection

How often do users share collections? Return rates for sharing collections

Number of items from other profiles’ stories shared per user per day – as a direct message or added to their story

Number of users adding items to their story per day

% of items shared where added filters or text were used

Return rates of sharers