Instagram Introduces New Feature to Embed Photos and Videos on Websites

instagram embed

Instagram has announced a new feature to embed content like photos and videos on your website or blog.

Now when you visit an Instagram video or photo on a desktop web browser, you’ll notice a new share button on the right side of the media (under the comments button). Once you click the button, you can easily copy the embed code and paste it into your website or articles where you want the content to appear.

embed highlight

instagram embed

Instagram also mentioned that you still own your photos and videos, no matter where they appear. So any media embedded will always properly credit and link back to the original Instagram author. Your embed code appears with your username, and clicking the Instagram logo takes people to your page on Instagram.com where they can explore more of your photo and video collection. I’m not sure why clicking your username or a picture itself doesn’t link anywhere, but this is a start. Of course if your Instagram post is private, then nothing is changed, only public posts have the embed code available.

Here is an embed example of one of our latest Instagrams:


 
The embed option makes a lot of sense for Instagram to finally incorporate like YouTube, Vine and Flickr already do. As a site that encourages users to create and upload new content, how could there not be an option to host that content elsewhere? The only reason I could think of that prevented Instagram from doing so in the past was bandwidth issues. They were so focused on mobile traffic before, maybe they didn’t have enough resources to open up to the web yet, which Instagram is finally doing. Either way this could provide a big boost of website traffic and links back to Instagram.
 
What do you think about the new Instagram embed option? Is this something you would use on your own blog?

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

2 comments

  1. An embed option is a great and highly valuable addition to Instagram… good move on their part. It’ll make content created on the platform just that much more useful and versatile, and I think there will be a number of businesses and brands that will be excited about this news. It’s just another step to a more desktop-friendly Instagram, which I think will be appealing to many users (not to underestimate the volume of web and social media traffic on mobile devices).

    Thanks for sharing the news.

    Matthew.

  2. An embed option is a great and highly valuable addition to Instagram… good move on their part. It’ll make content created on the platform just that much more useful and versatile, and I think there will be a number of businesses and brands that will be excited about this news. It’s just another step to a more desktop-friendly Instagram, which I think will be appealing to many users (not to underestimate the volume of web and social media traffic on mobile devices).

    Thanks for sharing the news.

    Matthew.

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