Instagram May Soon Let You Follow Hashtags

Instagram may soon become a lot more interesting for photographers in search of inspiration. The photo sharing service is apparently testing allowing users to follow hashtags in addition to other users.

The Next Web reports that the hashtag follow functionality was first spotted by @Social_pip, who shared a screenshot of the discovery:

Ok this is new. What does this do @SimonSocialMM @BizPaul @NatalieTFG any ideas? I've followed 2 but can't find what that means!! pic.twitter.com/LlCBk4Wmfv

— Pippa Akram (@Social_Pip) November 9, 2017

So instead of having your stream filled with photos from specific photographers, you’d be able to follow photography genres that are of interest to you — things like landscapes, portraiture, street photography, photojournalism, and more.

Based on the tooltip in the screenshot, it appears that Instagram will allow you to see both “top” and “recent” stories of any given hashtag.

The feature test appears to be very limited at this point, and there’s no official word yet from Instagram regarding if or when we’ll be seeing it rolled out to the general public.