First of all, there is some new stuff that just dropped on Instagram, I'm sure you all have seen it. I don't know if you use Instagram that often but there's new stuff on there, and then we've got a bunch of stuff I hear that's coming down the pipeline. First of all, let's talk about what's new, Threads.

Downloaded Threads, it's essentially taking your DMs off of Instagram into its own app and then allowing you-- It's very similar to Snapchat. It makes it very easy to send photos and DMs to specifically, your close friends. This is part of Instagram and Facebook's drive towards more private messaging, more one-on-one messaging. This is something that Mark Zuckerberg came out and said maybe a year and a half ago, he was going to start to be a focus with them as they started to focus on privacy. For me, Threads isn't that interesting. Young people use these social platforms in a very different way that we do, and I'm sure it is an attempt to steal some of that young business away from Snapchat.

Another is removing the following tab, which for the stalkers out there is super depressing. I used to love to see my bro-y friends from high school and be like, "Bro-y friend one liked eight photos," and it's just like eight thirst traps, not realizing that his wife could also see that tab. We also used to use that back in the early days before we built Follower Health. It was an easy way to see if someone was using a bot to engage because you could see them engaging and then you would go into the photos they engaged with and it was a Russian with 14 followers and 2 photos. That is gone. I imagine some of it was probably pressure from celebrities not wanting their activity to be public. That is gone.

Those are really the two big changes that have come out. There's a couple interesting things that have been rumored that I've seen screenshots of, let's run through them really quick. One, Instagram stories is going to get gridded layouts so you can do two, four, six photos and a single Instagram story is going to essentially try and replace Unfold. Sorry to the Unfold founders, but as we know, Facebook is going to try and destroy all of us, so a good reminder for us.

They're ripping off TikTok. I told you guys a few months ago, they hired one of the lead designers at Vine. They're rolling out something that is similar to TikTok. It's a camera, it's got some editing features to create short little videos. We'll see how that goes. Seeing screenshots for being able to share comments with friends. I think this is in response to some of the, again, to this idea of like people loving to share celebrities' comments and things and just start conversations around the engagement, so sharing comments. A screenshot for desktop messaging.

This is something they've said for years that they've been working on and is 100% in their pipeline. Desktop DMs seem to be coming in the not so distant future, that will be awesome. There's a stop motion camera, for Instar stories, for creating easy stop motion movies. If you're still in 2010 and you're in the stop motion, that will be exciting for you. IGTV series, so you can create a series in IGTV and I think those-- All of the videos in that series will be nested inside of that.

Our friend Jesse Kirby does weekly outfit videos on IGTV. She could name that series and it would all live in one place. There is two new types of boomerangs. There's one that's going to pause at the end of the loop and one that's going to like wiggle at the end of the loop. I don't know what that's going to look like. Apparently, that's coming down the line. Notification filters, so for all y'all who actually have a big following, not me, you're going to be able to filter your notifications, I think, to maybe be able to see just people you follow or close friends, so you don't miss notifications that I know could get lost if you get tens of thousands of notifications.

Lastly, they are testing out some layouts, some new layouts for Explorer. I haven't really seen screenshots for it yet, but Explorer as it is. The way that content gets pulled into Explorer has changed quite a bit in the last few years. I don't think the general layout or design of Explorer has changed much other than including video and IGTV and now stories. Interested to see what they do with Explorer. That is new stuff that is coming down the pipeline on Instagram. As always, important to stay on top of this stuff. If you've seen our interview with Taylor Lorenz who's now an internet culture writer at the New York Times, who also writes about influencers, she's a good Twitter follow. She's on top of all this shit and is a good person to keep an eye on if you are wanting to know what's coming down the pipe.