You can now share your location with your followers on Instagram

A few days ago, a leak concerning a new feature of Instagram emerged on X tweeted by Alessandro Paluzzi, a tech industry insider known for anticipating app innovations. The experimentation of the new feature was also confirmed by Tech Crunch, who received the news from a Meta employee. In short, according to recent leaks, Instagram is working on introducing the Friend Map, which would allow users to see the real-time location of their contacts. If the new feature, currently in testing, were to become a reality, it would be yet another imitation by Instagram of Snapchat. The social media platform by Mark Zuckerberg already introduced Instagram Stories in 2016, effectively replicating Snapchat's main feature introduced in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. The goal is to generate as much traffic as possible on the platform, "forcing" users to spend more time scrolling and using the various features available on Instagram.

According to screenshots published on Threads and X by Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram's "Friends Map" would allow users to choose who can see their location: it will be possible to share it with all followers, with the list of best friends, and of course, there will be an option to completely deactivate the feature. Additionally, the map would also include a "Ghost" mode to hide the last recorded location and allow users to send short messages to others or simply leave a note. If the feature were officially launched, Instagram would become an even more comprehensive social network, implementing a feature that is already available on iPhone through the default app "Find My" and demonstrating how convenient it is for users to have various functions in one app. Fortunately, unlike some old Instagram features that allowed monitoring of activities performed by contacts in the last few hours, deciding whether to activate the Friend Map will be purely optional, leaving users the freedom not to "give away" their privacy.