Instagram Tests Picks to Surface Shared Interests

Instagram is quietly developing a feature called Picks that would let people list favorite movies, books, TV shows, games and music, then surface overlaps with friends. The feature was first revealed by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi and later confirmed by Instagram as an internal prototype not being tested publicly.

What Picks would do

According to screenshots shared by Paluzzi, users pick favorites across media categories. Instagram then identifies overlaps between friends who chose the same items, making shared interests visible and offering natural conversation starters.

Why Instagram might build Picks

Instagram has signaled a 2025 focus on creativity and connection. Picks fits that direction by turning passive content discovery into active friend-centered interactions — a nudge to make DMs and small-group conversations more relevant and frequent.

It’s a familiar product pattern: surface common ground to lower the friction of starting a conversation. Think of Picks as a digital icebreaker embedded in your profile rather than a randomly recommended post.

Potential benefits and tradeoffs

• Higher engagement: shared picks can prompt DMs, replies and story interactions.
• Better personalization: overlap signals could feed recommendations tailored to friend groups.
• Privacy and friction: asking people to curate picks raises consent, discoverability and data-use questions.
• Feature fatigue: Instagram already faces backlash over additions like Instagram Map, and Picks risks adding complexity to an app that many say is overcrowded.

What product teams should watch

If you’re building something similar, consider three practical pilots before a wide launch:

• Small-group A/B tests that measure whether visible overlaps increase conversation rates without boosting churn.
• Privacy-first defaults and clear controls so users choose what is discoverable and by whom.
• Signal quality checks: prioritize high-quality overlap signals (shared niche interests) over noisy ones (broad mainstream picks).

Product leaders should ask whether Picks changes user behavior in ways that matter — more meaningful messaging, not just more notifications. A single well-timed discovery that leads to an ongoing conversation is more valuable than dozens of superficial overlaps.

For Instagram, Picks fits a broader goal: make connection features more central than broadcast content. Whether users embrace another profile-based prompt will depend on execution — and whether the feature feels helpful or intrusive.

Paluzzi’s discovery and Instagram’s confirmation mean the idea is under active consideration, but there’s no public test or timeline. As with many prototypes, Picks may never ship, or it may evolve significantly before any wider rollout.

At a time when platforms are balancing discovery with intimacy, Picks is a straightforward experiment: can explicit shared tastes be the spark that reignites friend-to-friend conversation? The answer will depend on careful measurement, privacy safeguards and a light touch in design.