Although the Friend Map feature on Instagram is growing, it seems to have copied the Snap Map location-sharing feature launched on Snapchat in 2017.
users Snap Map is a feature that helps Snapchat view content based on location but also allows sharing their location with friends. If two users follow each other, they can share their location so they can see what’s going on around them.
Not only that, this feature has been expanded by Snapchat such as adding the Explore map section, the iOS version expands the popular location-sharing feature, adds memories, and learns by Find feature. Apple’s My with real-time location sharing function
With Instagram, a developer decompiled the application source code in November 2023 and discovered that this Meta application was building a Friend Map (Instagram Friends Map), he also discovered a series of screens showing how its mode of operation. Features listed include selecting friends to share with, end-to-end encryption of the user’s location, and anything shared with a location tag will appear on the map
As always with this type of discovery, it’s unclear when or if Instagram will roll this feature out. Mashable commented that the possibility that this application will continue to publish features from Snapchat is very high because Instagram is known to copy features from social media applications often.
First, the Stories feature was also developed by Snapchat, Reels is a copy of TikTok. Even Instagram’s Notes and Threads features are said to be taken from Twitter/X and Candid from Bereal
