Instagram tries to build virtual communities for college students

Remember how Facebook used to be an online community to connect Harvard students? Well, it seems the social network wants to connect with its past and is extending this to its other social network Instagram. The Facebook-owned company is testing out a feature that will bring college students together into groups. Instagram is inviting select users to join groups for their schools. The social network is able to figure this out based on the accounts they follow, their connections, and public posts. This can be seen as Instagram’s attempt to attract the younger set of users who now refuse to use Facebook.

Those who opt in need to choose their university and graduating year from a set of predetermined choices. Once they’re in, Instagram will show them lists arranged by members’ classes to make it easier to find people from the same year. Public stories are also viewable within the list. There is also access to direct messaging members in the list. Instagram has to develop this further though to make sure creeps don’t make it in. CNBC says one of its reporters got invited to join the community for their alma mater as a current student. Instagram assures that the feature is in its early phases and tools to report inappropriate usage are in place.

Hundreds of Instagram users report falling prey to similar account hack

Screenshot from Chris Woznicki, one of the victims of this new Instagram hack

A bizarre hack seems to be hitting Instagram users this month with users getting logged out and their personal details changed. The users discover their accounts being signed out, their handles and profile photos changed (often to a Disney or Pixar character), bios deleted, and the accounts are now linked to an .ru email address (a Russian domain). Most of the people Mashable talked to did not have two-factor authentication turned on, but one said he had it enabled but it was disabled and his account was still hacked. Aside from changing personal information, the hackers don’t seem to be posting or removing any photos from the accounts. No one seems to be claiming the hack just yet.

The difficulty for those hacked though is that it’s more difficult to get back into their accounts with the changed personal details. And it seems Instagram’s largely automated process of trying to get back into the accounts prove to be inadequate. Abagail Nowak, one of the victims of the hack describes it as a “maze.” She says, “The maze that Instagram sends you on to get your account back is laughable and leads to broken/dead links and emails from robots which lead nowhere.” Instagram hasn’t responded to requests for comments on the hack but we’ll report back when we hear more.

Source: CNET

Go incognito on Instagram by turning this feature off

Want to hide the fact that you’re online on Instagram? You might not have noticed this but Instagram has an Activity Status feature that shows if you’re online. If you’d rather not broadcast to your followers that you’re on the social network, you can easily turn that off. Just head to Settings and then scroll to the Privacy and Security section, and then pick Activity Status menu. There you can toggle the off button for Show Activity Status. Once you do this, the green dot beside your icon will disappear. One thing you need to note though is you won’t be able to see who is active either.

Source: Lifehacker

Instagram introduces ‘Question Sticker’ to Stories

Instagram’s latest addition to its ephemeral Stories feature is a new sticker. The Question Sticker will help you interact with your friends and followers easily. This joins the existing polling sticker and emoji slider and is accessible through the stickers section of Stories. Type out your question and just like any other sticker you can place this anywhere in your story. When your friends or followers want to answer, they just tap the sticker to reply and answer as many times as they want. You’ll see all the responses in your viewers list and you even have the option to share their answers. But when you share their responses, their username and photo won’t be visible. Question Sticker is rolling out to both the iOS and Android apps.