It's been under development for some time, and Instagram finally initiated live testing for its new "Friend Map" feature, capable of displaying the location of your friends on a dedicated display within the application.
According to this overview, the new "Friend Map" on Instagram would let your friends see where you are, and even where you have been as any posts and/or Stories that you have tagged with a location added to the map displays.

You can also add Notes to any location or place such that you will be able to give your friends feedback and insights based on your experience.

This could provide further space for discussion and user interaction, but IG is also hesitant about the update as it feels that there may be some privacy concerns related to it.

Instagram says it is testing Friend Map, currently on a small group of users, which will share the location with only a friend on your "Close Friends" list or mutual follows within the app. Public location sharing and tagging of contents will not be available with that feature.

That's much like Snapchat's Snap Map, and, in theory at least, that ought to alleviate some of the big main privacy objections. Although there is not much that either IG or Snap can really do if a mistake occurs in adding a friend, and then this friend just so happens to be a predator, and who can therefore unwittingly obtain a users' location in the app.

So, there's a built-in danger with this feature, and one that likely outweighs the benefits for many users. But for cautious connectors, it could be a handy feature in helping manage IRL meet-ups and make Instagram more social, building off the ever-rising popularity of DMs within the app.

The target group for this, of course, is younger users, which IG desperately needs to retain in the face of the growing competition from the likes of TikTok and Snapchat. Younger users have increasingly been using the app to talk one another instead of posting to the feed or Stories (or Reels, which is largely entertainment-focused, not social connection), and Instagram has tried to monetize this with features like Notes, which it claims have proven hugely popular with young users.

That more intimate engagement points to opportunities for add-ons like Friend Map, in facilitating even more connection in the app. And if it works for Snap, which announced just recently a new milestone of 850 million active users, maybe it'll be popular on IG as well, leaning into these evolving usage behaviors.
As mentioned earlier, Instagram has been working on its "Friend Map" feature for several months. The first elements were spotted in the testing phase back in November last year, and more advanced screenshots of the feature were found in February, when Instagram first publicly confirmed that it was indeed developing the feature to display.

And now, it is available for some users.

Will it work? Sure, I can see the concept: serve teens' usage behavior since teens are much more socially active than most adult users. But it does carry risks, which, if I were Meta, I wouldn't know I would have missed.

For now, this is only a test, and IG will be closely monitoring this particular aspect as it monitors the first use of it.