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Facebook has encouraged people to start posting everything that they upload to picture sharing site Instagram Stories on its WhatsApp messenger service.
The company has introduced an option for cross-posting updates on both platforms.
These updates would disappear after 24 hours on the platforms, which are both owned by the social media giant, a feature already available with Instagram Stories - a feature which allows users to collate pictures and videos into a slide show.
The option is not available to all Instagram users yet, however, as Facebook is still trialling it.
But it is thought the feature will help regular users of both platforms to save time, by allowing them to post the same content in one move.
“We are always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and make it easier to share any moment with the people who matter to you,” a spokesperson told the TechCrunch website.
Instagram Stories had 300 million daily active users in November and WhatsApp Status has a similar number.
It is unclear how popular the new feature will be, as some people may feel more comfortable posting personal updates to one service or the other and will not necessarily want to post to both at the same time.
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11 useful Instagram features you didn't know existed Eat less data If you’re worried about how much of your mobile data Instagram saps, you can limit it by sacrificing the speed at which the photos and videos in your feed load. Go to your profile, tap the three dots in the top right corner, open Cellular Data Use and choose Use Less Data.
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11 useful Instagram features you didn't know existed Find relevant hashtags Everyone knows you can expand the reach of your posts by using a number of relevant hashtags, but what those are aren’t always glaringly obvious. You can easily find the right ones for you by typing a keyword into Instagram’s search bar, selecting a hashtag from the list and swiping along the Related row that appears at the top of the screen.
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Stories, however, hasn’t had the same sort of success on Facebook or Messenger, where it is being largely ignored.
Facebook recently combined Facebook Stories and Messenger Day to create Stories , because people didn’t know why or even if the two features were actually distinct from one another.
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