The Borneo Post

Simple ways to master Instagram account

- By Hayley Tsukayama December 18, 2016

INSTAGRAM, at first glance, seems like a pretty simple social network: snap, post, repeat.

But while the service started as a way to share artful pictures from your smartphone, it’s evolved into a far more complex network for sharing photos and videos with friends — or an adoring public. To help you keep up with those changes here are some tips to help you master your own Instagram account. • Sharing options

By default, your account is public, meaning that anyone who knows your username can follow you and see your pictures. If you don’t want everyone to see what you’ve posted, you have a couple of options. For one, you can make your account private, so only followers whom you approve see your pictures. That option is in the settings menu; just turn on “Private Account.”

If you want to be even more selective, use Instagram Direct. It lets you share a photo with a smaller group of your followers (up to 15), and you can also set new Direct photos or videos to disappear.

There is also another mode called Instagram Stories, which only last for a day and are shared with all your followers. These let you string together several shots, edit them with text and pictures, and construct a narrative about your day.

Finally, Instagram also this week added a new feature for all users called Live. It lets you share live videos that can be up to an hour long.

Finally, Instagram also this week added a new feature for all users called Live. It lets you share live videos that can be up to an hour long. To access Live, swipe right from your feed to call up the camera, and then hit “start live video.” Your followers will get a notificati­on that you are rolling. The videos are deleted as soon as they’re over. • When to share your location

Sometimes it’s good to share where you are when you’re taking a particular shot, say, when you want to show the world you’re at an amazing waterfall in Morocco. Adding a location is easy — just choose one of the suggested locations listed on the screen where you’re composing a post. Or, if those locations aren’t right for some reason, tap “Add location” and type in your own. • Managing multiple accounts

To add an account, head into the settings and scroll down until you see “Add Account.”

Then add your second account by signing in with your username and password, and you’ll be able to flip fairly seamlessly between the two. You’ll get push notificati­ons from both accounts, if you’ve enabled notificati­ons on both. • Customise your experience

Obsessed with a particular account and want to get a notificati­on every time there’s a new post? If you hit the three-dot menu when you’re looking at that account, you should get a pop-up menu that includes an option to get a notificati­on each time they post.

There are also some good customizat­ion options for your own account, as well. If you have filters you never use and hate scrolling through them as you’re looking for a filter, you can hit the “manage” button located at the end of the filter options to disable the ones you don’t use. You can always get them back if you change your mind.

And if you ever want to refer back to a photo that you liked but don’t want to scroll endlessly through your feed to find it again, head into your settings and hit the “Posts I’ve liked” option. There should be a record there of every photo that ever earned a heart from you. • Managing other people

While you can’t control other people’s behaviour, you can control whether you want to deal with it. Instagram has released a few features to block comments with words or phrases you don’t want to see.

To do this, head into your settings menu and find the “Comments” menu. Turn on the option to “Hide Inappropri­ate Comments,” which will filter out comments using commonly offensive words. Below that option, you should see a text box that lets you type in custom keywords, in case there’s a particular word or phrase you want banned.

In the coming weeks, Instagram will also let you completely turn off comments on certain posts, so if you’re really not interested in hearing from people you won’t have to give them a soapbox on which to stand.

You can also block users, of course, if someone in particular is giving you a hard time. Just head to their profile, tap the three-dot menu and hit “Block User.” You can use the same steps to unblock someone if you need to in the future. • Saving space (or making copies) If you’re really an of-themoment Instagram user, then you may not want the app to save copies of all the photos you post and take up storage space on your phone. You can head into your settings and flip off the option that asks you to save photos to the camera automatica­lly. Now you can take photos to your heart’s content.

On the flip side, iPhone users who want to toy around with a photo by applying multiple filters to a single photo, for example, can turn on the camera roll feature, flip their phones into airplane mode and go through a faux posting. Without an internet connection, the post-filter picture will be saved to your phone for future use.

This is also a good tip if you want to use an Instagram filter on a picture but don’t actually want to post it. — Washington Post

 ??  ?? This is the story of a cat with lasers for eyes. — Instagram photo
This is the story of a cat with lasers for eyes. — Instagram photo

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