Instagram launches Stories feature

Instagram launched Stories, a secondary feed of content from users that will only be available for 24 hours. If that sounds familiar, that is because it is a near pixel for pixel copy of rival Snapchat’s stories feature.

From the Instagram blog:

“With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about over posting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day — with as much creativity as you want. You can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools. The photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid or in feed.”

Stores, which launches on both Android and iOS worldwide, places a row of circular icons on top of the existing feed horizontally. It contains every photo and video placed in the stories from the last 24 hours. Unlikely Snapchat you can go back, like pages, to previous parts of stories.

There is no way to like, heart or comment on stories. However, just like on Snapchat you can reply to a story. It will go as a direct message to the user’s message box. Another thing to note is that the privacy of your stories follows that of your main account. As a result, if you have a public account, then your stories will also be public.

The response so far has been quite good, though it will be interesting to see how it fares once the novelty wears off.