Instagram tests sharing posts with only your closest friends

Instagram's algorithmic timeline is an abject failure if you actually want to see all of your friends' posts. As a way of seemingly admitting that, the photo-and-video-minded social network is testing a new feature called "favorites," according to The Verge. The idea is pretty simple: you make a list of the people you want to see your post as soon as possible, and then send it to them privately, either as a Story or the timeline. It sounds a lot like sending photos to your friends on Snapchat versus pushing them to that service's Story. Hrm. Posts that go out to your friends list will appear in their timelines and will have a green check mark in them.

Instagram's product lead says people are trying to "hack" the service to make smaller audiences and this is evidence that the developers are listening. The test is available for a minute set of users, with a possible broad roll-out in the next few months.