An Instagram users checks out a profile. Pic: Pixabay

Instagram to add ‘translate’ button as it aims for globalization

By | 24 June, 2016

HAVING just hit the 500 million users mark, Instagram has become more than just a photo-sharing tool in the six years it’s been around – thousands of brands all over the world also use it as part of their marketing strategies. As Instagram announces plans to roll out a translate feature, globalization is a mere tap away.

Starting July, Instagram users can now translate posts in other languages with a translation button on “feed stories and profile bios” written in languages that are not their own.

In a post on their own Instagram account, the social media network said: “The Instagram community has grown faster and become more global than we ever imagined. And we’re excited that you’ll soon be able to understand the full story of a moment, no matter what language you speak.”

Instagram is hugely popular in Southeast Asia, with 10 percent of the population using the app as of 2015. According to StarNGage, an analytics and marketing platform owned by Instagram, this equals to about 60 million people or the entire population of Thailand using the service.

SEE ALSO: Thai photographer completely changes the way we look at Instagram

The current version supports the following languages: Afrikaans, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, and Turkish.

This update comes as Instagram also experiments with the way its news feed works – no longer chronological, but by using an algorithm that prioritizes what it thinks users want to see first.

Unfortunately, not everyone is happy about this:

https://twitter.com/ben_smith_13/status/746206440503681024



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