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Instagram will help you book a haircut

Appointments are coming to the social photo service.

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Instagram will soon be about more than browsing your friends' photographic adventures. The social service tells Bloomberg that it will soon add an option to book appointments by visiting a company's profile. Yes, you could schedule that overdue haircut in between liking cat photos. The feature is only slated to arrive sometime within the "next couple months," but there's talk of adding reviews and other tools in the future.

It's no secret as to why Instagram would make such a move. It's determined to make shopping a mainstay feature, and appointment-based business is a logical extension of that. Garages, restaurants and salons may be more likely to buy those all-important Instagram ads if they know that the promos will lead directly to more reservations. And when Instagram notes that 80 percent of its many users follow at least one business, that's a lot of potential new customers.