Tag friends, corporates and selfies with the new version of Instagram

The latest version of Instagram comes with a feature that will appeal to the Facebook fiends in all of us. Yup, you can now tag yourself, friends and brands in your artistically filtered photos.

The new system of tagging, freshly baked into version 3.5 of the service’s iOS and Android apps, means that you’re no longer constrained to the bare bone system of @tags when you want people to know they’re in a photo.

Once you’ve tagged someone in a photo, they can navigate to the new “Photos of You” section of their profile where they’ll be able to browse all the photos they’ve been tagged in. You can also control which photos of you are visible to your followers. If you allow photos to be added automatically, you will have the option to hide any of the photos at any time. If you decide to review all Photos of You before adding them to your profile, the only photos visible in the Photos of You section will be the ones that you manually choose to add.

Instagram also reckons “Photos of You” is good for business. On its business blog, it says:

As a business or brand, Photos of You gives you a new way to curate and share the photos that best showcase your brand your brand as documented by your biggest fans.

Introducing Photos of You from Instagram on Vimeo.

Instagram hasn’t exactly changed much since its 2010 launch. There’ve been a few new filters, a web interface has been added, along with a map interface but no significant overhauls. Then again, it’s done pretty well on that basis so rapid evolution hasn’t exactly been necessary. Also, given the level of hate Instagram’s parent company Facebook receives every time it updates, it’s actually a pretty smart move.

The update was released simultaneously across Android and iOS, meaning that all Instagram users can start tagging people right away. If you want to start tagging friends, tap the three dots at the bottom of a photo screen and select “add people”. From there, tap the photo and you can type in the account you want to tag. Once you’ve tagged someone, you can drag their tag around on the photo, or tap it again to delete it.

To view photos in which you’ve been tagged, tap on your profile. On the far right, you’ll see what looks like silhouette. Tap on that and you’ll see the images. This section will remain private until 16 May.