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Business News Digital
Instagram to allow more links in user bios
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 19 April 2023
Instagram has announced that users will now be able include up to five links alongside their profile bios on the platform, possibly removing the need to use a service like Linktree.
The Meta-owned social media service has always been rather restrictive when it comes to allowing users to include links in their posts and on their profile, it being keen to keep people within the Instagram ecosystem. The restrictions also mean it can include linking as an added value feature on paid-for posts.
In terms of allowing multiple links alongside a user’s bio, Instagram has always presumably assumed, probably correctly, that many people would use that facility to include links to their profiles on all the other rival social media platforms.
But those restrictions created an opportunity for companies like Linktree, of course, with the usual work around being that the user tells their followers to look for the “link in bio”, which takes people to a Linktree profile, where a plethora of links can be provided.
Confirming the increase in the number of links allowed per profile, Instagram admitted that more flexibility around posting links has long been a request from its users. TechCruch notes that it may have been motivated to finally add some more flexibility in order to distinguish itself from TikTok, which has even more restrictions on posting links.
People can still have a Linktree link as one of their five links. And if the user is planning on changing their chosen links on a regular basis and is active on multiple social media platforms, having a platform agnostic link service does still kind of make sense. And, of course, in music smart link services like Linkfire and Feature.fm offer extra functionality and analytics.
But it will still be interesting to see what impact the move at Instagram has on Linktree and its competitors.
