Instagram’s Broadcasts Channels are up and running 📢

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Instagram has announced a new way for creators to send photos, videos and text to their followers. Broadcast channels would allow fans to subscribe to their favorite personalities’ channels, giving them direct access to updates.

Broadcasts Channels : Curtain Call 🎯

According to the latest press release from Meta, Instagram’s « Broadcast Channels » are there to create a connection between influencers and their followers on the platform. With this, content creators or celebrities can talk directly to their fans and bring updates about their lives, new content, offers, events and more.

Basically, this new option allows content creators to offer a new discussion space (channel), within which they can share with their subscribers :

• text,
• images,
• GIFs,
• voice messages,
• polls.

For their part, subscribers to the content creator only have the option to react to the posts with emojis, and to answer the various polls.

For now, the broadcast channels are accessible on Instagram, and will also be available on Messenger and Facebook in the coming months.

Good to know : this new option is currently being tested with a limited number of content creators in the US, but will be rolled out to more users in the coming months. If you’d like, you can sign up for a waiting list to request early access. Doesn’t this remind you of the Beta Test feature on Play Store?

Fluid interaction between subscribers and content creators ✅👥

The new channels could be of great use to Instagram users!

You see, for content creators, creating a channel would represent a nice way to promote content more easily, offer exclusive information or even get the community involved via polls for example. Another advantage: you have to be a subscriber to a creator to be able to join his or her channel, so this represents a new way to gain subscribers! We can imagine the next step to make it a means of remuneration, paying subscriptions for more exclusivity. To be continued.

On the subscribers’ side, participating in a channel allows them to really belong to a community, and to get a certain proximity with their favorite content creator!

Let’s take the example of Mark Zuckerberg, who announced the arrival of broadcasting channels by launching his own channel:

« I am launching this channel to share news and updates on all the products and technologies we are building at Meta. This will be the place where I share news about Meta products first. »

Source: Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg therefore promises participants some exclusivity, and encourages users to subscribe to his Instagram account in order to join the channel. New subscribers and an engaged community, what more could you ask for? It’s like who would say the winning Combo.

Not so different from Telegram channels 😑

Broadcast channels are new on Instagram, but they may look very familiar to you! That’s normal because they strongly resemble Telegram channels, which offer much the same « one-to-many » communication system (1 person to many people).

Well, we’ll just have to wait for the global rollout to see if this new means of communication will be adopted on Instagram, and to what extent it will shake up the relationships between content creators and their communities!

Sources : Instagram, News 24