The Zuckerberg-owned company recently unveiled Instagram channels, its own take on Telegram channels and the most recent in a line of Meta apps to draw inspiration from other platforms. The company describes the newly introduced feature, which was unveiled by Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday, as a broadcast chat feature for exchanging news and updates regarding all products developed at Meta. It is currently only accessible via the mobile app. There are plans to add support for collabs with guest appearances, AMAs, and more to the platform in the upcoming months. It currently supports a variety of media formats, including text, images, polls, reactions, and more.
With the help of text, photos, videos, voice notes, polls, and other media, content creators can communicate with their followers using the new Instagram channels. The new feature, which is currently being tested with a small group of creators that includes Austin Sprinz, Chloe Kim, David Allen, Gilbert Burns, and others, is anticipated to be made available to all users very soon.
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So how does the broadcast operate? Once a creator has access to broadcast channels and sends the first message from their Instagram inbox, their followers will get a one-time notification to join the channel. Although anyone can find the broadcast channel and view its content, only followers who subscribe to the channel will get updates. By visiting a creator’s profile, tapping the bell icon, and choosing “broadcast channel,” followers can choose to leave or mute the broadcast channel at any time and manage their notifications from creators. “.
Notifications are set to “some” by default, but this setting can also be changed to “all” or “none.”. Except for the invitation notification, viewers will not get any other alerts from a broadcast channel unless they add it to their inbox. A channel will appear among other message threads in their inbox once they add it, and notifications will work just like chat notifications.
Creators can also encourage their followers to subscribe as soon as the broadcast channel goes live by using the “join channel” sticker in Stories or by pinning the channel link to their profile. Followers must tap the “Join broadcast channel” button found in the broadcast channel link in order to subscribe to the broadcast channel. Once they sign up, followers can comment on posts and cast their votes in polls, but they are unable to send messages.
