Instagram has a new feature, one of a few anticipated, and the initial reactions aren’t too thrilling. Similar to the Messenger's "seen" feature, Instagram now has a "Show Activity Status" that lets followers see when you were last logged in. Now it should be mentioned that Facebook has owned Instagram since 2012, which is why these two apps share overlapping formats and updates.

Social Media is about sociability

Yet this monitoring system isn’t anything new.

Just about every social media site from multibillion to startup has some form of an activity monitor, a way for other users to see when you’re online. It’s also a transparent method for the site to track how many active users they generate daily. But for some reason it’s being received as a kind of "stalker" tool, with some outlets going so far as to say it’s an invasion of privacy. Another additional feature being added, which some could say supports this new “stalker-friendly” platform, is a Profile View Counter that’s currently in the early testing phase. It shows how many people have seen your profile, but not who has seen it. It’s possible to turn this feature off of course if you do indeed think it’s an invasion of your privacy.

The largest argument against the update is that when it is enabled, you give up your anonymity when you open the app. People can see when you're online, so your casual searching or story browsing my be interrupted by messages or attention you may not be in the mood to deal with.

This is of course a personal preference to how individuals control their social media presence, and ultimately their personal relationships, so there is no right or wrong answer. Regardless of what you may think, here's a quick view on how to manually disable this feature:

Instagram takes the lead

In other updates, since Facebook’s announcement about cracking down on news integrity on their platform Instagram is reported to slowly but surely be becoming the savior for businesses in reaching their audiences -- and getting results.

Bleacher Report, a Sports Highlight entity, has reported a boom in success the company “never imagined possible." They expressed in an article on their site that since January 2015 they've experienced a 15-20% drop in their Facebook traffic. Their engagement record is one-tenth of a single percent, whereas on their Instagram, their 8 million followers are 20 times more likely to interact on posted content. Bleacher Report said they've used other popular social media like Snapchat, but they've yet to see the same growth rate that Instagram has given them.

So ultimately, for businesses worried about the underlining political and social stance Facebook is pursuing and how that could negatively affect them, as the saying goes: "When one door closes, another opens."
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