Right now, you can respond to a Story with a quick emoji response, which is then sent to the creator via DM, while you can also type in a direct response message that’s also delivered to their inbox. You can also engage with Stories by sharing, forwarding, etc. Read announcement: here.
ℹ️ Likes on stories will appear on your own story in the same place as story viewers. pic.twitter.com/Xdh7j4kOw1
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) October 5, 2021
But a like button could add another element, and by the looks of it, we may be close to finding out just how beneficial likes on Stories could be. As you can see in this example, shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram appears to be close to launching a live test of likes on Stories, providing an easy, quick way to engage with a Stories post, without having to clog up the creator’s inbox with reactions.
The new Stories like button, at least at this stage of the experiment, would appear alongside the message field at the bottom of the Stories display.
That would mean that the current Stories forwarding option, signified by the Direct paper plane icon, would be shifted to the function menu instead, and that format looks pretty effective, and as noted, fairly close to a test launch, given its development. But then again, Instagram has been working on this for some time – here’s another screenshot of the option in testing which Paluzzi posted last November.
Actually you can put a like multiple times pic.twitter.com/uPEa2gmgnm
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) August 23, 2021
It seems that Instagram has scaled it back a little, with only likes now available in the latest test, as opposed to all of the various Reactions options.
Like, what do you do with that? Send a heart back? A thumbs up?
ℹ️ Likes on stories will appear on your own story in the same place as story viewers. pic.twitter.com/Xdh7j4kOw1
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) October 5, 2021
It feels like ‘Reactions’ are not really designed for this type of response, which is why this update makes sense.Though for brands, it is worth noting that the removal of the sharing option from the bottom of the frame could result in fewer re-shares, while Stories likes would add another metric to track, and keep tabs on as a performance metric. Overall, it seems to make sense – we’ve asked Instagram for an update on the test, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.
Follow @itp.live for more updates.