Facebook testing new feature to cross-post feed posts to Instagram

San Francisco, Oct 19 (IANS) Social media giant Facebook is testing a feature that would allow users on its platform to cross-post their posts including photos or videos over to their Instagram.

The company noted the option is currently a global test that's only available to a small group of people who already have their Facebook profiles linked to a personal, creator or business account on Instagram, reports TechCrunch.

Facebook already allows users to cross-post their Instagram Stories and Reels to Facebook.

When available, one would see the feature in Facebook's compose box where one can create posts. The new toggle would appear besides those for editing the audience for the post and creating a new album.

When tapped, the user would be taken to a new screen where one can choose to share the individual Facebook post to the connected Instagram account, as well.

As per the report, users will be able to cross-post to Instagram single photos, single videos or multi photo albums up to 10 photos.

Currently, other formats, like GIFs, polls, photos albums with more than 10 photos are not eligible for cross-posting at present.

Earlier, Facebook merged Instagram direct messages (DM) with the Messenger app. With this, Instagram users are able to send messages to contacts on Facebook Messenger without leaving the app and vice versa.

To send messages to Messenger contacts from Instagram, Android and iOS users of Instagram will need to first update or download the latest version of the apps from Google Play Store (version 164.0.0.46.123) and Apple App Store (version 165.0), respectively.

Battered by the six-hour long global outage earlier this month, Instagram is now testing a feature that will alert users when the platform is going through major technical glitches.

The photo-messaging platform will notify users in their Activity Feed when the service experiences an outage or technical issue, and when it is resolved.