Instagram Revamps Explore and Search to Help You See Events and Places
Instagram wants to be more of a pulse of what’s going on in the world, so today the service announced overhauls of two major sections: Explore and Search. The changes are meant to help connect people to things in the world as they happen.
Explore
The Explore page now surfaces trending topics as they happen in real time through Trending Tags and Trending Places. If someone big is happening somewhere on Earth, it’s likely that the tag will rise to the top, giving you an easy way to follow along through the eyes of Instagram users at the scene.
The new design also features curated collections that are regularly updated with interesting accounts and places for various topics — things like “athletes,” or “ancient ruins,” or “towering rocks.”
Search
Instagram’s new search function has been given a new Places Search feature, allowing you to look at any place on Earth and see what people are posting from that location. A new Top Search feature is a unified search engine that looks up people, places, and tags all at once.
Availability
Instagram for iOS version 7.0 is available today in Apple’s App Store, and Instagram for Android version 7.0 is available today in Google Play. The redesigned Explore will only be available to users in the United States for the time being — Instagram says it will be rolled out internationally once it’s fine tuned a bit more.
