Instagram is apparently experimenting with its stories section amid increasing popularity. The Facebook-owned platform has been testing these “full-screen stories” for over a month now. Still, as of right now, it is available for select users only.
The platform is planning to replace the previous single row Instagram stories with double rows which can then be expanded to fill the entire screen by clicking on the “See all Stories” option. In may 2019 as well, Instagram was testing two-rowed Instagram stories. But since then it has improved this feature to make it more compact and minimal.
In addition to this, Facebook-owned Instagram is also planning to interchange the DM and notification access icons, so that the notification’s ‘heart’ icon will be seen on the top right corner, while the Direct Message’s ‘arrow’ icon will be moved to the bottom. However, with this new update users won’t be able to access DMs by swiping left anymore. Instead, they will have to click on the DM access icon at the bottom of the screen, which honestly, sounds like a big degrade. After all, it’s 2020. Who opts for “touch” over “swipe” anymore?
For those unaware, Instagram stories are posts which self disappear in 24 hours. Launched in 2016, it has quickly become one of the most popular Instagram features. More than 500 million users post stories daily. Originally copied from Snapchat, the feature allows businesses to advertise through the platform, using catchy, ephemeral content.
1.7 million users post stories on IG, and 500 million people view them on a daily basis. Instagram stories have been experiencing new updates regarding addition of new features, new cool filters, and new designs for more engagement from users.
Eventually, the double rows story display is going to get more emphasis than the post feeds since it takes up more screen space from now on. Promotional sites like heart bingo will get to be benefitted from this feature as well since they’ll be able to focus on their offers more in IG.
The benefit of this new intervention is that soon all IG users will be able to see all the stories of their followers by clicking the See all stories option. It is safe to guess that the IG founders got this idea from TikTok where users can watch multiple stories by tapping on the right side of the screen.
