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Instagram announced on Wednesday a makeover to its home screen by placing ‘Reels’ and ‘Shops’ tab at the bottom of the page.
The two features will appear alongside the 'home', 'search' and 'profile' buttons at the bottom of the page, Instagram said in a statement. The 'new post' button has been moved to the top of the home screen.
Easy access to the Reels tab is likely to give the short videos higher reach and views. Users can now also shop online easily on the recommendations of Instagram creators.
The Facebook-owned company launched Reels in August this year, to compete with ByteDance's short video-sharing platform TikTok. This came soon after the Indian government banned TikTok citing country security reasons. Facebook has not disclosed the number of Reels users.
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It rolled out the Shop account earlier in May, allowing small business and creators to promote sales on the platform. In July, Instagram replaced the Activity tab with the Shops tab, attempting to reach larger audiences. Facebook also integrated shopping platforms across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook has more than 10 million active advertisers across all platforms, most of them being small businesses that made online presence to reach customers during the pandemic, the company said in its quarterly earnings call.
