We take our Instagram Story viewer list for granted. Being able to tell who’s been stalking you (and your content) is a big Story perk.
For many influencers it’s the go-to option when recommending products, cultivating a discussing or uploading sponsored content. Being able to tell who is actually viewing Stories can have a big impact on how an influencer tailors their content to their audience.
In the past, an Insta-user would have access to their Instagram Story Viewer List after their Stories had “expired” (i.e. after the 24 hour period when they disappear).
There would be no rush within the time frame to constantly check the app to see who is viewing one’s Stories. A user could go into their insights at a later date and still view who had seen their Stories.
Not anymore.
As of yesterday, Instagram has removed the Story viewer list after 24 hours.
This means no more going back into your insights to see if you ex-boyfriend has been creeping on you.
The new update was discovered by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who shared the below tweet with his followers yesterday…
Instagram now hides story viewer list after 24 hours!
Lots of users right now be https://t.co/EZL7EYKLhE pic.twitter.com/TuNFVazQ5p
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) February 6, 2019
As always whenever a social media platform makes a drastic change to one of its features, Netizens took to Twitter to express their frustrations.
Why does instagram keep finding new ways to worsen our experience through every update? If shoving infinite ads down our throats wasn’t enough, now we can no longer analyse who viewed our stories after a day.
— Sudharshanan R (@Sud_411) February 6, 2019
But some really didn’t seem to care at all.
This is annoying, I love analysing my own story data
— Rosh (@RoshalPatel) February 6, 2019
Whether it matters to your or not, it’s frustrating that Instagram has taken away an insight feature that has historically been popular amongst users.
But on the other hand, at least they’ve beefed up privacy protect after the 24-hour timespan is up…
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.