Facebook allows users to post their Instagram Stories and Reels across to Facebook. Facebook is now testing a new feature that will allow posts to flow in the opposite direction. Recently, the company introduced an option that allows users cross-post updates to Facebook that contain photos and videos to their Instagram. This feature is great for people who use both platforms. It will save you the hassle of uploading the same media twice to two different apps. Facebook can also use this feature to easily seed Instagram with additional content, at a time when it is investing in Instagram's popularity with younger users.
Facebook stated that the feature, which is still being announced, was first launched earlier this month. The company said that the feature is currently only available to those who have their Instagram accounts linked to a personal, creator, or business account.
The feature will be available in Facebook's compose box, where you can create posts. You can also edit the audience of your post or create a new album with this new toggle.
Once you tap, you'll be taken to another screen, where you can choose whether to share each Facebook post to your Instagram account. This option will only be available for the specific post and won't become your default setting.
You can change your defaults by visiting the linked Accounts Centre. Here you can toggle on the option to automatically post all of your Facebook posts to Instagram and automatically share your Instagram Stories to Instagram Stories. This option was not available previously.
According to the company, users can cross-post to Instagram single photos or single videos as well as multiphoto albums with up to 10 photos. This is the maximum that Instagrams carousels allow. Cross-posting is not possible for other formats like GIFs and polls.
Facebook has been trying to make its apps more interoperable in recent months. This is not only by offering cross-posting for users of multiple apps.
Last year, the company introduced cross-app communication between Messenger (and Instagram) that allows Instagram users to communicate with their Facebook friends and (as at last month) vice versa. It has also been testing ways that Facebook users can make voice and video calls directly on Facebook, without needing to use the Messenger app. It also updated its ad products last month to add more tools that allow users to message businesses on all of Facebook's chat platforms. Users could click on an Instagram ad and chat with a business via WhatsApp, for instance.
This may be because it is more difficult to find out what content is where and who's using which apps. Because content and communications flow among the various apps of Facebook, tighter integrations could make it harder to exit Facebook. It could also be difficult to decipher if regulators decide to separate Facebook businesses, in case it was declared a monopoly in the future.
Facebook didn't specify how long the global testing would last or when it would be available to more people.
