Social media platforms enhance communications, allowing people to keep in touch in real time, by sharing different types of contents.
Instagram is the popular photo- and video-sharing social media. The Meta-owned platform has what it calls the Stories feature, which is among the largest and most popular content type the platform has to offer. This time, it is improving with the introduction of private Likes feature.
Previously, users can engage with others' Stories by sending a DM, or by re-sharing it or replying to it with a comment, for example.
This time, Instagram is introducing another way for engagement, which is using a simple Like.
To do this, users can just tap on the Like button, just like how they normally would with a regular feed post.
This feature doesn’t send a DM notification to the other user.
In an official announcement from Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, it is said this feature is being rolled out in an effort to clean up users’ DM inboxes that have been cluttered.
Private Story Likes
Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.
Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
It's worth noting that the Like button on this feature and on feeds does look the same.
There are major differences through.
Tapping on the Like button on the former appears as a heart icon. Tapping on this button doesn't trigger the notification, meaning that the Story creator won't know without checking it manually.
Instagram won’t push a notification about Story Likes because the point of rolling the feature is to reduce notifications.
Instead, users can see their Story Likes in what's called the 'viewer sheet,' which is the place where users would go to see who looked at their Story.
The information within is tracked for just 24 hours before the data disappears.
Another thing, Story Likes are not visible to the public, meaning that only the creator knows how many Likes their Story received.
The move is in line with Instagram attempt to declutter its platform, and make things easier for users.
It's also in line with Instagram's effort to improve its messaging experience.
Back in December 2021, Mosseri announced that Instagram is focusing on messaging, and plans to double down the work to improve transparency.
Then earlier this February, Instagram added features to make it easier for users to bulk manage their activities in the platform.
This feature allows users to bulk manage their content, allowing them to bulk delete or archive all of their content including posts, Stories, IGTV, and Reels, along with their interactions like comments, Likes, Story sticker reactions, and others.
Read: Instagram Introduces 'Security Checkup', A Way To Bulk Manage Posts, And More