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Instagram launches Snapchat-style ‘Stories’ – everything you need to know

There’s also the rather sneaky option to hide your story from a follower you don’t want seeing it (hiya, grandparents…) – and to check out exactly who has seen each stage of your story. Instagram says its community wants to share more, but feels reluctant to put too much into the feed, and Stories present a way for people to add a lot more media without bulking up the main feed. “They want to be able to share more to Instagram”. The latter change is a sign that the stories endeavor doesn’t quite fit into Instagram’s existing feature set.

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“With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about over-posting”, said a spokesman for Instagram. Clicking on the photo opens up a full-screen view of the story, which can be paused or rewound as a person watches. -This in turn takes the fear out of over-posting. There are filters, drawing tools and other features that allow people to edit the image before it posts.

Instagram’s main feed remains the same, a point that Weil stressed. You don’t get to Like or Comment or any of the Story posts, just view them.

Anything you post in your story will disappear after 24 hours, unless you download it or take a screenshot of it. There are no likes or public comments, but you can tap on a post to send a private message to that person on Instagram Direct.

Your story follows the privacy settings of your account.

It addresses Instagram’s Snapchat problem – specifically, that people love Snapchat.

Facebook, of course, has tried many times (unsuccessfully) to emulate Snapchat in some way – both through new standalone apps and through features within its own apps.

Snapchat also recently launched a feature called Snapchat Stories, that lets you draw together a selection of “Snaps” to create a narrative. “Stories will be the same type of format”.

He also notes that Instagram introduced Stories because of demand from its community of more than 500 million users.

Instagram Stories is being rolled out from today. “That’s the basis for the product”.

Instagrammers will see stories from people they follow in a bar at the top of their feed.

Instagram is taking a page out of Snapchat’s playbook.

You’ll find stories from friends and popular accounts in a navigation bar at the top of your Instagram feed.

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But Instagram is not just about close friends and family.

Courtesy of Instagram