Here's What You Need To Know About Using Snapchat's New Mentions Feature

From lenses to stories to 24-hour viewing limits, Instagram has often mirrored Snapchat's features. But now, Snapchat appears to have taken a page out of Instagram's book. Just like on Insta, Snapchat users will soon be able to tag friends in their stories — a feature that highlights Snapchat's transition from an app initially centered around private communication with friends to a more public form of social media. That being said, users of the app who have their profiles set to private are likely wondering if they'll be able to untag themselves from friends' Snapchat stories.

Update: A representative for Snapchat tells Romper via email that Snapchat users will not able to remove a tag from a friend's story. But, as usual, users can press and hold a Snap to reveal an option to report other users.

The tagging feature is not yet live — it will be rolling out over the course of this week. That being said, your profile will remain private if that's how you have it set, and the only thing people who click your tagged name will be able to view is your basic info, like your username as well as your Bitmoji (if you have one), as TechCrunch explained. Because private profiles will still remain, for the most part, private, people seem pretty excited by the feature (which is being called "Mentions," according to The Verge) since they'll more easily be able to see posts they appear in.

It also does not seem like users will be able to remove a friend's tag from their own Snapchat stories, should they accidentally tag the wrong person.

On the other hand, celebrities, influencers, and brands are likely looking at this feature in a totally different way. Now, when a celeb is being paid by a brand to promote their product on Snapchat, they'll be able to tag the brand — perhaps providing an incentive for brands to pay their promoters more money, as people will be able to more easily visit the brand's Snapchat profile.

Here's how the feature works. (Hint: it works a lot like tagging on Instagram Stories.) To "mention" a friend in a Snapchat story, simply add a text field, type the "@" symbol, and then begin typing your friend's name. When they pop up, click their name, and they will be tagged in your story. The tagged friend will then get a notification that they were mentioned in your story.

Additionally, as explained by TechCrunch, the tagged story will automatically be linked to the tagged friend's profile. All you have to do is swipe up to see the tagged person's profile, Bitmoji, their current story (if it's public), and a button to add or follow them.

TechCrunch actually first reported this rumored update on March 8. At the time, Snapchat confirmed to the outlet that it had been "testing this." Now, nearly a month later, Snapchat has officially announced the news, as well as another feature being included in the app's newest update: Snapchat will soon be able to host multi-user video chats and conference calls — for seriously large groups of people.

With the update, Snapchat users will be able to video chat in groups of up to 16 at once, as noted on Snap Inc.'s website. Furthermore, groups of up to 32 people will be able to speak on a group voice chat. I certainly don't have 31 friends who would all want to talk to me at the same time, but if you do, this feature could definitely come in handy.

The evolution of Snapchat since its emergence as a place to secretly send your BFF goofy pics full of quirky filters has certainly been an interesting one. For those who still want to engage in activities from the Snapchat days of yore, perhaps a burner account would be a good idea. Otherwise, happy tagging!