A new Story engagement feature is being added to Instagram,
which allows users to react to any Story by liking it, but without starting a
DM conversation with the creator.
According to Instagram’s chief Adam Mosseri, the new Likes
on stories will neither be publicly displayed, nor will they have counts. Moreover,
they will appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet,
which when tapped, will let the creator know that you have liked their Story.
❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
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
To creators, these Likes will appear in their Story insights
in the form of small hearts next to each viewer’s name in the view listing.
This new react option is simpler, as it the Likes won’t be received
by users in their DMs, unlike how Story reacts currently work on Instagram. It could
also boost engagement, as Instagram may use the insight for ranking the Stories
in users’ feed by highlighting those that are most likely to be of
interest.
While this new addition isn’t anything major, it could still
be pretty useful for the app, especially considering how Instagram is gradually
redesigning its platform to resemble TikTok’s layout and functions.
