Now You Can Save You Favorite Instagram Thirst-Traps

Instagram has always encouraged profligate "liking" of photos, but what if you want to come back to something you see in your timeline? That's being addressed today, with the new ability to save posts on Instagram to a private log. A new bookmark icon has been added to all public photos in the app; tap that, and the image is added to a special tab that only you can see.

As Instagram tells it, this is a great way to save a photo and details of an outfit you particularly like, a meal or restaurant you want to try, or a video to come back and watch later. Once you tap the bookmark icon on a particular photo or video, you can find it again by going to your own profile and tapping the bookmark icon there. The content you've saved is shown chronologically.

However, since the person whose photo or video you've saved isn't notified when someone taps the bookmark, it seems likely this will turn into a good way to catalog the thirst traps you come across on Instagram. No, I'm not judging you for it. The contents of your saved posts list can't be seen by anyone else.

It's the latest of Instagram's moves to shift away from solely being a place to share photos and instead be more of a social network in its own right. Most recently, that meant the addition of live video streaming, effectively turning Instagram into a Periscope and Facebook Live competitor. Before that, though, the app added disappearing photo and video support, akin to Snapchat.

At the same time, the increased emphasis on social interaction has forced the company to do more about cyberbullying. A suite of tools added earlier this month included the ability to disable comments on specific posts, in addition to being able to bump followers from a private account, as well as anonymously report certain posts.

Saved photo support rolls out as part of Instagram 10.2. That's being released in the App Store and Google Play today, for iPhone and Android respectively.