Amidst the recent events of frequent outages faced by social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, and especially Instagram, the last one is trying to help deal with the issue in its own way. Instagram is reportedly testing new features which would update or notify the users about any potential or ongoing outage beforehand and when it is resolved.
Both WhatsApp and Instagram are owned by Facebook, and Facebook services have faced outages two times in a month, one of which lasted for around 6 hours. The first outage was experienced worldwide on 4th October. The reason cited by the company was a faulty configuration change, which diminished Zuckerberg’s wealth by $6 million in a matter of 6 hours.
The second outage was faced on 9th October; however, this one was short-lived than the previous one. As per the company blog about the recent events of outages.
Facebook announced via its blog post that the company was testing its two new features, which aim to inform the users about their service or account status in case of any disruption. Apparently, upon conducting extensive research and on the basis of the conversations with the communities, Instagram realized how users get confused whenever there is an outage and seem to think there must be trouble with their device. Therefore, they started working on new features which will save the users from this trouble by notifying them about the outage when it happens.
As per the updates, the first feature by Instagram will notify the users about the outage or any technical issue directly in their activity feed. However, the company also cleared that they are not going to convey a message or notification every time there is an outage, but only when they see there is confusion among people, and they need answers.
The abovementioned first feature will be first rolled out in the US, and if it starts making sense, Instagram will expand it widely.
The second feature is related to Account Status, which is currently in the testing stage. As per the update, these two new tools will make it easier for the people or Instagram users to be able to see what is going on with their accounts, content distribution, and if their account is at risk of being disabled. Under the Account Status feature, users will also be able to make an appeal if they feel a mistake has been made on the part of the company. They will be able to do so directly from the Account Status by the option “Request a Review.”
The blog post by Instagram further stated that the company would soon share more information regarding these features. The blog read, “In the coming months, we plan to add more information to this tool, giving people a better sense of how their content is being distributed and recommended across different parts of Instagram.”
This update was brought by Instagram after the social media platform, along with WhatsApp and Facebook, suffered global outages for a long period of time. The instances of outages are getting more frequent. Therefore, Instagram came up with this measure to introduce new features to alert the users about any such technical issue.
