Instagram announced a new Stories feature in August, and now it will start showing these in the Explore tab as well. Instagram’s Stories is a copy of the Snapchat’s popular Stories feature, and lets users add quick and instant updates on the app. Users can scribble different colours on top of these video, photo Stories, although Instagram doesn’t have support for face filters, Bitmoji, like Snapchat.
Now Instagram’s Stories will reflect on the Explore section in order to boost visibility. According to the blogpost by Instagram, “More than 100 million people visit Explore every day to discover photos and videos from people they don’t yet follow. The new suggested stories section highlights the most interesting stories from across Instagram’s vast global community — and like the rest of Explore, the stories you’ll see are personalised to your interests.”Instagram has over 500 million monthly active users, and earlier reports have indicated Stories have seen good engagement, traction on the website. Stories on Instagram are quick updates, and less stylised than the photos, videos people tend to share on the app.
The latter usually have a lot of editing, filters, etc added to them. Stories on Instagram have the same privacy setting as a user’s account; so if your account is private, the stories will only be visible to your followers and not everyone on Instagram. Instagram’s Stories are supposed to be a new way of increasing engagement on the app. By adding them to the Explore tab as well, Instagram will be giving prominent space to Stories.
Just like Explore shows photos, videos from people who you might not be following on Instagram, Stories in this tab will also appear from those you don’t follow. And yes, Stories you’ll see will be around topics, content for which you’ve shown interest on Instagram. So if you follow a lot of food or pet-centred accounts on Instagram, expect to see such Stories in the tab as well.
Instagram, owned by Facebook, is one of the world’s leading social networks with over 500 million monthly active users, and over 300 million daily active users (DAUs). It is well ahead of Snapchat and Twitter in terms of DAUs, but with Snapchat growing in popularity, Stories was introduced to counter the upcoming app. Instagram has not yet given any numbers on how many people are using Stories daily.
