Collab posts

Instagram Collabs supports feed posts, carousels and Reels, so co-authorship is not limited to video.3 A collaboration has one like count, one video view count where applicable, and one comment thread.27

Since August 2023, Instagram has allowed both public and private accounts to receive Collab invitations.3 A private account can also start a collaboration, provided the people it invites follow it back.38 Mosseri cautions that collaborating with a public account makes the content public, so a private account’s participation does not keep that collaborative post private.9

Meta’s January 2023 patent explores collaborative posts and their responses.10 Meta’s patent describes attributing a post to multiple accounts and hosting it in association with those accounts rather than only the uploader’s account.10 Meta’s patent also considers choosing who may see the post according to their interest in the collaborators and their relationships or interactions with them.10 For responses to that post, Meta’s patent describes giving multiple collaborators feedback and engagement information rather than supplying it only to the account that uploaded the content.10

Mosseri’s April 2024 advice about Collabs accompanied a plan to recommend less content from accounts that collect and reshare other people’s posts and focus more on original creators.11 Instagram for Creators’ April 2026 guidance addresses a specific situation: it recommends collaboration tools, including Collabs, for third-party content that the posting account helped create, to help prevent that content from being categorized as unoriginal.12 For simply highlighting someone else’s work, Instagram for Creators instead recommends sharing it to a Story or using reposts.12