Instagram now lets you bookmark posts for later viewing

Instagram will now let you save your favorite posts from its service for later viewing via a new bookmarking button that appears below the posts in your feed. The idea is that there are times you’ll encounter content you’ll want to revisit – including, perhaps, a product you want to buy from one of Instagram’s advertisers. By tapping the bookmarking button, you’ll be able to more easily locate these items in a new, private tab on your profile at a later point.

In its announcement, Instagram suggests you could use the feature for those times when you “stumble upon a funny video you want to remember, a new outfit you like or even inspiration for an upcoming vacation.”

Those latter two items position the app as something of a challenge to the image and link-saving pinboard site, Pinterest, which also focuses on inspiring users ahead of their eventual purchases.

By allowing this same sort of activity to take place on Instagram, where it can also be tied into more extensive profile data from the service and from parent company Facebook, Instagram will be able to learn more about users’ interests, even before they make a transaction. This could eventually help with ad targeting, as the data set becomes more robust.

The company is already touting the new feature to potential advertisers, explaining that it could be used by people who want to remember a post about their business.

Also of note on this front: Instagram recently began testing tying a business’s Instagram profile page directly to their Facebook presence, via a new feature that puts a link to their Facebook page at the bottom of their bios. Facebook confirmed the test, but declined to comment further.

Additionally, the new feature is similar to Facebook’s own “Save” option, which is often used with links and videos you want to go back to read or watch later. On Instagram, being able to bookmark videos could also lead to increased app engagement from users who will go back to watch and rewatch their favorite content.

Instagram says the bookmarking icon is rolling out now in version 10.2 of its mobile app for iOS and Android. It will arrive on Windows 10 in the coming weeks.