Facebook tests a new feature that lets you cross-post from Facebook to Instagram

Users can currently cross-post their Instagram Stories and Reels to their Facebook timelines. Facebook is now experimenting with a new feature that would allow posts to flow in the opposite direction as well. 

In a recent upgrade, the company introduced a feature that allows users to cross-post their Facebook updates that contain photographs or videos to their Instagram accounts. With this feature, people who use both platforms will be able to upload the same media only once instead of twice. This allows Facebook to easily feed Instagram with more content at a time when the company is focused on ensuring that Instagram continues to be a popular social media platform among younger users despite rising competition from apps such as Snapchat and TikTok.

The feature, which has not been officially announced, began rolling out early this month, according to Facebook. Currently, the feature is only available to a select number of people who have linked their Facebook profiles to a personal, creator, or a corporate account on Instagram as part of a global pilot phase.  This feature will appear in the Facebook compose box where you write posts if it is available to you.

Additionally, there are buttons for modifying your post’s audience and creating a new album beside the one for adding a new post.  When selected, a new screen appears where you can opt to share the specific Facebook post to your associated Instagram account as well. The page notifies you that this option will apply only to the current post and will not become the default going forward.

However, if you want to change your default settings, you may go to the associated “Accounts Center” and turn on the option to automatically share all your Facebook posts to Instagram. 

Users can cross-post up to ten photographs, videos, or albums to Instagram. GIFs, polls, photo albums with more than ten photos, Feed reshares, text-only posts, and any other material too tall for Instagram’s Feed are not eligible for cross-posting at this time.

For some time now, Facebook has been attempting to improve the interoperability of its various apps, including cross-posting.  Last year, it added cross-app communication between Messenger and Instagram, allowing Instagram users to talk with Facebook friends (and vice versa as recently as last month). 

The company is also exploring a way for Facebook users to make audio and video calls straight on Facebook without having to move to the Messenger app. Last month, it updated its ad products to allow users to message businesses on any of Facebook’s chat platforms, not just the one where the ad appears. So, for example, a user may click an Instagram ad to start a WhatsApp conversation with a brand.

This may make it more difficult to determine where content resides and who uses particular app. Because content and communications move between Facebook apps, it may be difficult to totally abandon Facebook. In addition, if Facebook is labelled a monopoly in the future, regulators may find it difficult to divide the company into distinct businesses.

This global test will last for an unknown amount of time, and Facebook has not stated when it will be made available to everyone.