Instagram Stories are meant for a way to quickly share things. Prominently displayed on top on the interface, they can drive a lot of engagements.
However, there are times that users don't want all of their followers to see their Stories. For example, those users who fear that their boss, parents, children or distant acquaintances will see their silly or not-so-awesome Stories.
To those people, they may have refrained in using Stories, because the feature can expose their vulnerabilities.
In order to get people in sharing more, and also more authentically, Instagram is allowing users to share Stories to fewer people. The feature is a tweaked version of 'Favorites', which was an attempt to reinvent the friends list and encourage people to share more by letting them post to a more limited group of their followers.
After more than a year of testing, Instagram is globally launching 'Close Friends' to user on iOS and Android.
The feature allows users to build a private list of chosen followers on Instagram through suggestions of search. This way, users can share their Stories only to these selected individuals.
When users post Stories to these selected people, they will see a green circle around the users' profile picture in the existing Story tray. This is letting them know that the Story is a Close Friends-only content.
According to Instagram director of product Robby Stein:
"To really be yourself and connect and be connected to your best friends, you need your own place."
The feature is indeed a welcome one, as it is intuitive and useful.
It should release some of the tense pressure when attempting to post some Stories, especially to those who are shy or never used the Stories feature before. To others, it can be a place to share what might otherwise considered too random or embarrassing.
Stein noted that:
"People get friend requests and they feel pressure to accept. The curve is actually that your sharing goes up and as you add more people initially, as more people can respond to you. But then there’s a point where it reduces sharing over time."
Some young Instagram users have invented the idea of 'Finstagrams,' or fake Instagram accounts, as their way to share posts to just their favorite people, without the pressure to look awesome.
With 'Close Friends' feature, Instagram is formalizing this idea.
Previously, Facebook's 'Lists' feature which is similar to Instagram's Close Friends feature', struggled to get the traction it needs; Google+ also failed with Circles, which was one of the social media's selling point. The two failed because the features were either too complicated or too boring.
Snapchat also has its own Groups feature, but it's also too complex to use as it's easy to forget who's in which list.
Instagram plays the game a little more carefully, as it built Close Friends with just a single list in hopes that users won’t lose track.