Instagram Users Can Now Add Hashtag, Profile Links in Bios

Instagram on Thursday announced the introduction of hashtag and profile links in the bio section. Instagram biographies are where users introduce themselves to their "followers" and to the world and they have a space of 150 characters to do it. Previously, you could only add text and not a proper link in your Instagram bios, with the new feature, whenever a user mentions another account or hashtag in their profile bio, it will show an actual link that people can tap on.

This means when now when a user uses a "#" or "@" in their bio, the text becomes a live link, which further leads to a hashtag page or another user's profile respectively. To use the new feature, go to Edit Profile option and go to the Bio section. Here, you can add a hashtag or tag someone. Instagram will automatically convert the hashtag into a clickable hyperlink. It will also suggest trending hashtags as you write.

Also, users can link to someone else's profile without the need to add the whole "http://instagram.com/" part. Similar to how you tag a person in the comments section of a post, just type "@" followed by the name. Instagram will add the link to it. Interestingly, when you link to another person's profile, they will get a notification and they can also disable the link, if they wish to.

The introduction of hashtag and profile links in Instagram bio makes the space a little more useful for creators and comes after some improvements to the service. In December last year, Instagram had launched a feature which enables users to follow specific hashtags, apart from user profiles.