Instagram’s Stories feature is still being tweaked. Last year, they started displaying two Stories on the home tab, in a paginated row rather than a single line, in the hopes that more people would tap through them.
Thankfully, Instagram decided against implementing this new format.
This isn’t to say they won’t continue to experiment with Stories.
Instagram has added timers to Stories. Instead of the user’s name, you’ll now see a timer immediately below the Story bubble to let you know how long each Story will be on Instagram until it expires — Stories have a 24-hour restriction.
Instagram is focusing all of its efforts on increasing interaction on its Stories format, believing that people’s FOMO would drive them to click on Stories before they expire.
Depending on how you feel about Stories, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. The Stories in this format, like the entries in your feed, aren’t even in chronological order.
INSTAGRAM IS BETTING ON FOMO(FEAR OF MISSING OUT) AND HOPES THESE TIMERS WILL PROMPT MORE PEOPLE TO CLICK ON THE STORIES BEFORE THEY DISAPPEAR.
Snapchat, LinkedIn, Spotify, and now Twitter’s Fleets feature have all adopted the ephemeral format of Stories.
