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Tech

19th Oct 2016

Instagram have just made a big change to their stories feature

Alan Loughnane

You’re going to be seeing a lot more of them…

It’s been a little while since Instagram came up with their, totally original and not copied from Snapchat, idea to allow people to upload stories on the app for 24 hours.

While initially it had only stories from the people you follow on the site, that has now changed according to an announcement from the Facebook owned company.

They have now added strangers stories to the top of your explore feed to coincide with your followers stories on your home page.

With an estimated 100 million people using the explore tab on Instagram every day to find photos and followers that they don’t have yet, Instagram see it as an ideal way to boost engagement and accessibility.

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Instagram introduced stories as a way to increase engagement on the site as the rate of sharing photos and videos had begun to decline but also as a way of combating the growth of Snapchat, which had become the default place for young people to share moments and photos.

So far it has been a relative success for them with one third of their 300 daily users utilising Instagram stories.

“More than 100 million people visit Explore every day to discover photos and videos from people they don’t yet follow,” the company said in a blog post.

“The new suggested Stories section highlights the most interesting Stories from across Instagram’s vast global community – and like the rest of Explore, the Stories you’ll see are personalised to your interests.”

The changes have already been rolled out on the latest version of Instagram on Android and iOS.

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