Instagram Adds March Madness Themed Features

Instagramā€™s added some new features for March Madness, providing more ways for fans to engage with college basketball in the app.

First off, IGā€™s added some new basketball animations that will appear on Notes when you use certain keywords.

As you can see in this example, when you include terms like ā€œBracket buster,ā€ ā€œSlam Dunk,ā€ and ā€œMiami Heatā€ in your inbox Notes, basketball icons will appear on your Notes display.

I mean, Iā€™m not sure how many people are saying ā€œdid you see that slam dunk?ā€, but semantics aside, itā€™s a themed addition for basketball fans.

Instagramā€™s also added a special effect for DMs when you share a Reel from the tournament, or from one of your favorite teamā€™s IG accounts.

Thereā€™s also a new ā€œbasketballā€ chat theme, as well as team-based ā€œAdd Yoursā€ templates for Stories, providing more ways to show your support.

Finally, IGā€™s also added 32 new team-specific Giphy stickers for Stories.

Some fun additions, which could help to encourage more engagement and sharing around the event. I mean, most of these are Easter egg style additions, so youā€™re not actively adding them, as such. But even so, when other users see these effects activated, that could encourage them to share the same.

Instagramā€™s keen to tap into sports, in order to win more fans across from X, which remains the leader in real-time sports engagement. If Meta can build its own sports communities, on both IG and Threads, that could be a big step in building both apps as natural homes for real-time sports discussion.

Which X is still better suited to, but the visual focus of IG could make it a good complement, and thematic celebrations like this may help in Metaā€™s broader effort.

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