Instagram is introducing a new way for users to engage with Stories, showing appreciation with a simple like instead of sending a direct message.
In an official statement from Instagram head Adam Mosseri, the feature is said to be rolling out to clean up users’ DM inboxes.
Previously, to participate in an Instagram Story, you either had to re-share it or reply to it with a comment.
These options all clutter a user’s DM inbox with notifications.
You can now participate in stories by hitting the “Like” button, just like with regular feed posts, and it won’t send DM notifications to other users.
While the buttons look the same, there are some major differences between a like on a story and a like on a feed post.
Here’s what you need to know about them.
How Instagram Story Likes Work
There is now a like button in the form of a heart icon on Instagram Stories.
Users can express their appreciation for your story by clicking the “Like” button. You won’t know how many likes your story has received, or who liked it, unless you check manually.
You can see what your story likes in what’s called a “viewer table”, where you can see who has viewed your story.
Instagram won’t notify you about stories you like because they’re being rolled out to reduce notifications.
AS Mosseri announced earlier this year, one of Instagram’s top priorities is to improve the messaging experience. Story likes are part of a larger effort to improve Instagram DMs.
Story likes are not visible to the public, so only you know how many likes a story has received.
Since story likes are tracked in the viewer table, you will have 24 hours to see how many likes a story gets before the data disappears.
Mosseri did not specify whether story likes would have an impact on the algorithm.
So if a story gets a lot of likes, it’s unknown if it will be pushed to the top of the story carousel.
We also don’t know if likes increase the chances of a story appearing in the Explore tab.
And likes on feed posts definitely have an algorithmic impact on the main feed and the Explore tab.
For all the known details on Instagram Stories likes, see Mosseri’s announcement below:
❤️ Private stories like ❤️
Launching today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without having to send a DM.
Likes for stories are personal and do not count. Instead, they appear as hearts next to character handles in your Story View table. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
Transcript:
“Today, we’re launching Story Likes — you can like any story you see on Instagram. So now when you’re browsing a story, between sending a message and that little paper airplane, there’s a heart icon .. if you click on it, it will send a like to the author of that story, and that like will show up on the viewer sheet, not in your DM thread with them. So you can do that instead of having to Worry about messing up your messages.
If they want to see all their likes, or if you post a story and want to see your likes, you can go to the viewer table for that story and any viewers who actually like the story will have a little heart icon.
The idea here is to make sure people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up the DMs a bit. I said at the beginning of the year that messaging is our number one priority, and a big part of that is focusing DMs on conversations between you and the people you care about.
So check it out. Browse your stories and send a like if you find yourself interested. Give someone a little love. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any other ideas for what we can do to improve the messaging experience on Instagram. “
Featured Image: Look Studio/Shutterstock
