Instagram almost seems specially engineered to be the modern human's most perfect time-waster — it is, in essence, an endlessly-scrolling picture book for grown-ups, social media-savvy teenagers, and all of our incompetent parents who can’t figure out how to stop double-tapping every single photo.
In the wide world of the photo-sharing platform, there’s something for everyone to love — and besides, who even needs “fresh air” or “the great outdoors” when you have troves of beauty and style inspiration, food and travel porn, and vicarious peeks into all the A-list celebrity lives you’re not living?
But we hope you’re prepared to spend even more time on the app, because Bloomberg reports that Instagram is set to roll out a feature enabling users to book hair appointments, restaurant reservations, and more directly from the business’s profiles. The process will be kind of like what you already experience with Yelp or OpenTable… but with much better visuals. That means you’ll be able to click on the account of that Hollywood-favorite salon you’ve been stalking for years and book your color appointment right then and there — just like that.
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The new feature will be essential in giving Instagram’s more than 1 million active advertisers a better, more tangible way of measuring the impact of their accounts and strategies, says James Quarles, the app's head of business. “When someone books an appointment, that's not a ‘like’ or a ‘follow,’ that's actual action,” Quarles told Bloomberg. Users will become IRL consumers, not just social media followers — and that’s a whole new ball game for the over eight million businesses who maintain profiles on the app.
The update is expected to kick off within the next couple of months, so keep an eye out. The next time you spot geode-inspired highlights you want on your head immediately, it may be little more than just a click away. How's that for convenience?
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