San Francisco, June 14 (IANS): Facebook-owned Instagram has introduced a new feature called "Archive" which lets you move previously shared posts into a private space much like photo-sharing app Snapchats "Memories".

Instagram hopes that "Archive" will not only stop people from deleting their photos but also make them more comfortable with sharing certain photos in the first place.

"Your profile is a representation of who you are and evolves with you over time. With Archive, you now have more flexibility to shape your profile while still preserving moments that matter," Instagram said in a post on Wednesday.

The feature allows for posts that have been previously shared on the platform to be hidden from a user's public profile without deleting them, by moving them to an archive section that is visible to only them with the option to move it back into the profile at any time. 

"Archive" is similar to Snapchat's "Memories" which was launched in 2016 as a way to save videos and photos shared on Snapchat in a private archive.

The move comes after the recent addition of a slew of new features by Instagram with many of these new features being remarkably similar to those in Snapchat.

Specially notable among these is the "Stories" feature first debuted on Snapchat in 2013, introduced by Instagram in August 2016 under the same name.