Instagram may be developing Snap Map dupe to locate your friends

Another Snap feature on Insta? Groundbreaking.

Insta could soon have its version of the Snap Map.
Credit: Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Originality is overrated, anyway. Instagram is reportedly going to do what it does best: blatantly copy another social media site’s feature.

Think about it. Stories were ripped from Snapchat. Reels are a TikTok dupe. It copied Notes and Threads from Twitter/X and Candid from BeReal. The latest dupe? Snap Map. That’s right, Insta is reportedly going back to its roots and taking inspiration from Snapchat.

Software engineer Alessandro Paluzzi posted on X that Instagram was working on a Friends Map. This follows, Paluzzi noted, a related nearby feature.

Tweet may have been deleted

Paluzzi noted the feature would be opt-in and that your location would be end-to-end encrypted. But basically, you would reportedly be able to see where your friends were located on a map, just like Snap Map.

Now, to be clear, this feature has not yet been released and amounts to a rumor at this time. The Verge noted, however, that Paluzzi “discovers a lot of Instagram features before they’re announced.”

If Paluzzi ultimately proves to be right, well, then, you’ll have yet another Snap feature on Instagram.

Tim Marcin is a culture reporter at Mashable, where he writes about food, fitness, weird stuff on the internet, and, well, just about anything else. You can find him posting endlessly about Buffalo wings on Twitter at @timmarcin.

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