Whether it’s catching up with friends or exploring shared interests, connecting with others is why people come to Instagram. Today, we’re introducing several updates to help you feel closer to the people you care about.

We’re beginning to roll out Notes, a new way to share your thoughts and see what your friends are up to. Notes are short posts of up to 60 characters using just text and emojis. To leave a note, go to the top of your inbox, select the followers you follow back or people on your Close Friends list, and your note will appear at the top of their inbox for 24 hours. Replies to notes will arrive as DMs in your inbox.

During testing, we learned that people liked having a lightweight, easy way to share what’s on their mind and start conversations. From asking for recommendations to sharing what they’re up to, Notes give people a casual and spontaneous way to express themselves and connect with each other.

People enjoy sharing throughout their day to Stories – from highlights to the more everyday moments. We’re testing new features in Stories to help people more easily share in spontaneous, fun ways to help create even stronger connections with friends. 

• Add Yours nominations: Since we launched Add Yours in Stories last year, we’ve seen how prompts help inspire people to share in unplanned and creative ways. We’re testing an update to Add Yours where you can invite friends to participate by tapping pass it on when you see a prompt that reminds you of them.
• Candid Stories: We’re starting to test Candid, a new way for you and your friends to capture and share what you’re doing right now in a story that’s only visible to those who also share their own. Capture a candid from the stories camera, the multi-author story at the top of feed, or from the daily notification reminder that starts after your first candid. For those who don’t want to receive the daily notification reminder, you can always turn it off in your Settings. We’re also testing a similar feature on Facebook Stories.

People often create group chats on Instagram to share entertaining content, bond over memories, and make plans with friends. We’re testing new features to give people more ways to collaborate and connect with friends in groups.

• Group Profiles: Soon, people will be able to create and join this new type of profile to share posts and stories in a dedicated, shared profile with friends. Whenever you share content to a Group Profile, that content will only be shared to group members instead of your followers, and will be posted on the Group Profile instead of your own. To create a new group profile, tap the +  and select Group Profiles.
• Collaborative Collections: We’re testing a way for people to connect with friends over their  shared interests by saving posts to a collaborative collection in your group or 1:1 DMs. You can start or add to a collaborative collection by saving a post directly from feed or sharing a post to a friend via DM and saving it from there.