Meta-owned Instagram on Wednesday introduced new features to the app in India, including Instagram Gifts and new editing updates on Reels, to help creators unleash their creativity and earn more from their Reels content.
Today, the company showcased the new Instagram features at a product education workshop in its Mumbai office. "Every day, teens and creators are using Instagram to tell their story in exciting ways. This is happening on Reels, as well as other surfaces like Feed, Stories and DMs.
We wanted to highlight these diverse use cases to inspire creativity, as well as highlight some new features that will help them build an engaged community," Paras Sharma, Director of Content and Community Partnerships at Facebook India (Meta), said in a statement.
With Instagram Gifts, creators can receive gifts from fans who purchase them directly within the Instagram app using Stars. "Viewers can purchase stars and use them to send you gifts on Instagram. Instagram will then provide you with a revenue share from your Reels that received gifts on a monthly basis equal to $.01 for every star received from fans," said Instagram.
Gifts will be rolling out in India in the next few weeks. Moreover, the company has introduced new updates to its Reels editor globally, which will come in the next few weeks. The update includes features like Split, Speed, and Replace.
Users can now easily split a single clip into two clips with 'Split', and can speed up or slow down their clips with 'Speed'. With Replace, users can swap one clip out for another without changing the timing or order of other clips, audio and other elements in their reels.
The company also introduced GIF comments on posts and Reels, which is now available globally.