In a new post on X/Twitter, Alessandro Paluzzi has revealed that Meta is working on a new feature for Instagram called Friend Map and he has also posted screenshots of the feature, spilling beans on the next big thing coming to the social media platform. Going by the information he shared, Friend Map, as the name suggests, will show you where your friends are on a world map and display their posts on it. Plus, it will also let you leave notes on the map. So, Instagram’s Friend Map looks very similar to Snapchat’s Snap Map.
The screenshots reveal that Friend Map will let you choose which friends can see your location (including the ability to enable ‘Ghost mode’ where you can “Hide your last active location”), and inform people that the location sharing is end-to-end encrypted and anything that you share with a location tag will appear on the map. Furthermore, it says “Your location will only update when you open Instagram.”
Currently, there’s no info about when Meta is planning to roll out Friend Map. However, going by screenshots, the development of the feature seems to have been completed. With that, the company could make Friend Map available in the beta version of Instagram in the next few weeks and roll it out to the public a couple of months later after thoroughly testing the feature. Instagram has already stolen Snapchat’s stories feature, and with the latest addition to that list, Instagram will strip even more users from Snapchat.
