Instagram has been on a feature rollout spree since the start of this year. The introduction of ‘day long’ stories has opened up many options for Instagram to experiment. Recently the Facebook-owned photo-sharing company rolled out the IGTV update which allows users to upload videos of up to one hour. Now the company has released a new ‘questions’ update for stories where users will be able to ask questions in response to a story. Notably, the last update which Instagram brought to stories was the slider feature. This new feature will be available in the same section as the other add-ons in the stories where the slider, GIFs and stickers are present. Users can click on the ‘question’ tag and then they will be able to type in the question over the story. The sticker will be editable with the option of changing colours and adding a different style of the text. This new feature has been expected to increase engagement in the stories.
Once you add the question to your stories over a picture or a simple plain background, other viewers will be able to put in their responses. Then the user who posted the question will be able to share his reactions in return. When the user decides to share the answer publicly, it will be added as another story where the asked user will be able to add stickers, text etc. as he/she wishes. However, Instagram has taken care that while the response to the question is shared on the next screen, it won’t display the name of the user who has asked the question.
It is beyond any shred of doubt that Facebook has shifted all its focus on stories rather than the conventional news feed for Instagram. Also, it’s been a widespread belief for quite some time now that users see more massive engagement on their stories rather than on their actual Instagram posts. This new feature highly resembles the comment feature on conventional news feed like posts where users can hold conversations publicly. Although Instagram did introduce the capability to respond to stories in the DM, it was tough for users to share the response publicly from their inbox. The new question tag for stories solves this problem.
The feature has already started rolling out to iOS and Android devices both. The news about the feature had broken out last week, and it was quickly rolled out to the users. The version 52 of Instagram brings this feature onboard.
