Over the past few years, Instagram has overtaken Snapchat as the trendy social media app, with the former copying and then improving upon some of the features found on the latter's platform. It looks like Instagram is at it once again, with a new feature called Nametags surfacing for a handful of users to test out. 

It works similarly to Snapchat's Snapcodes, according to TechCrunch, and allows users to create a custom tag utilising emoji patterns. They can also be used for augmented reality selfies, along with sharing with others for later.  

For now, users will not be able to share them, but in future they should be capable of pointing their device's camera at a Nametag and then add the person who created it without having to type in their name or asking their permission. 

It's still a waiting game to see if this experiment will be made more widely available to the Instagram user base, especially as it's a rather niché offering.