I’m part of the team working on Adopt Me, and the limits of the social bar make it incredibly hard for us to effectively communicate with and support our players.
We think that Instagram should be added to this list of supported domains. You already have Facebook, who own and operate Instagram. In a recent poll we found a significant amount of our playerbase use Instagram - probably more than Twitter. We’d like to create an Instagram for our game, but we have no way to link it from the social links page.
Social Links should support linking to Instagram as a channel. Instagram is more popular among young players than Facebook, Twitch and Twitter which are all supported. These changes would make the experience of using the Roblox platform better for players, and allow developers to better communicate with and support their playerbases.
Facebook is not as ideal to share Roblox development since you’re generally required to make an account that contains your legal name and some other personal information. Some people don’t want their information given out, especially if thousands of players would see it. I’m aware that you can make accounts like business pages, but those generally require other information such as numbers or email and it just isn’t feasible.
Instagram allows you to make a profile using a simple username rather than a full-fledged name. You can also make into a business profile without as much extra work compared to Facebook. Also, Instagram seems to be very active in terms of using hashtags, which is a good way to get your post known around the network.
The only downside Instagram isn’t a supported domain is because it’s primarily for mobile. Yes, a desktop version exists, but it’s almost impossible to make a new post from it. Overall, Instagram seems to cater more to the app as numerous problems and bugs occur on the website such as likes not registering or feed not loading. It wasn’t until recently that they added the ability to properly reply to comments on posts via website.
Clicking an instagram link on mobile will prompt your OS to open the app, or you can navigate to the website. Instagram links open fine on desktop, allowing you to browse and follow if you’re logged in. If not, it’s easy to open the app on your phone and follow. I don’t think it’s particularly different to Twitter in this regard, and this isn’t a reason not to add it - Facebook pages are far more restrictive with regards to gating content behind logins.
As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to showcase our group’s development Instagram in front of our audience on the social links portion of our game’s page.
Currently, these are the only Socials listed available to put directly in front of Roblox players.
Facebook, the largest social network, is one of the options, which may be good for those taking that opportunity. Instagram is owned by Facebook, though a separate audience mainly leaning younger, more in-tune with the future of social media. Here is an article going a bit more in-depth
I think having Facebook warrants putting Instagram as well, and I think being able to showcase Instagram could improve development success for smaller niche game developers and mainstream developers alike, while building a brand image.
Note: I have personally seen much more engagement on an Instagram account with less than 1000 followers than my 6 year old twitter with 30k+ followers. I am biased for Instagram
Recently I went to add my instagram page on Roblox but realized that you cannot. I do not understand why this is, you have Facebook which is currently supported by the platform, yet Instagram is not. Instagram is owned by Facebook, though they have different audiences as shown by the demographics which have been posted previously by @TheAmazeMan . Roblox even has an instagram account which they use to reach out to players! Why can’t developers do the same?
Instagram is used by a younger audience than Facebook, and this accounts for the majority of the Roblox community.
Developers can also promote their pages more easily through this feature, and according to TheAmazeMan it can also “improve development success for smaller niche game developers and mainstream developers alike, while building a brand image”. (Which I fully agree with!)
According to Oberlo, 71% of the businesses in the United States use Instagram, and if Roblox wants to allow developers to establish real businesses with both a real-life and online presence (Like Red Manta), then I think adding Instagram compatibility would be a great way to do this.
Bumping this thread as Instagram opens up a lot of opportunities for Developers in general and I’d really like to branch out into the Instagram market more as there is so much potential to get out of it.
Recently me and my CCO (Chief Communications officer) were talking about possible means of social media management.
I do say thank you for bumping this thread up again as in my opinion, Instagram is A more favored platform over Facebook and maybe even twitch.
A lot of the age demographic of Roblox have an Instagram Account but not A software like discord(where you could include your Instagram)
This means, if you do not have users with A platform such as Discord to access Instagram user interaction and feedback is much more lacking and resource intensive.
Although I believe having the ability to add Instagram social links to games and group is a good idea, I don’t think you can compare the two services like this; Instagram is for sharing images while Twitch is for streaming.
As a Roblox developer, I’ve never understood why Instagram as a platform is banned from Social Links when Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, etc etc are allowed. As a user of all these social medias, I’ve been subjected to more objectionable content on Twitter and Facebook than I ever have on Instagram.
Instagram is an amazing platform to build an audience, I’ve personally found websites like Facebook and Twitter feel very corporate and disconnected from users - whereas Instagram, feels, more personable and I only follow people I’m genuinely interested in. Not to mention Instagram’s reach is a lot better than Facebook and Twitter.
Instagram also helps to legitimize our games, I still think ROBLOX has some stigma around not being a legitimate platform and perhaps seeing a ton of games and developers with hundreds, thousands and even in some cases MILLIONS of followers will be something that parents and media can recognize and easily connect the dots of how big ROBLOX really is.
