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Instagram’s latest update makes Stories more engaging
- Instagram Stories now support comments, allowing users who meet specific criteria to leave remarks and read those left by others.
- Only your followers can read the comments others leave on your Stories.
- To leave a comment, both you and the Story poster must follow each other.
When Meta (Facebook at the time) failed to buy Snapchat over a decade ago, Instagram cloned the Stories feature to attract its rival’s user base. Since then, the company has been actively developing and supercharging the functionality with new perks not necessarily available on Snap Inc.’s platform. The latest addition to Instagram Stories is support for comments. Through this new app update, eligible users can leave remarks on others’ expiring posts.
Instagram has announced that it’s rolling out support for Story comments. To minimize online harassment, the platform limits who can read and post comments on one’s Stories. It also gives users the choice to prevent everyone from commenting on the Stories they post.
To read comments left on someone’s Story, you must be following them. So, those randomly checking strangers’ expiring posts won’t be able to view any of the comments they’ve received.
Posting comments, on the other hand, requires both the Story poster and commenter to follow each other. This prevents strangers who follow you (but you don’t follow back) from leaving comments on your Stories that others can see. Otherwise, you could remove that option if you don’t want anyone to comment on the Stories you post altogether.
Instagram has long allowed users to reply to others’ Stories privately. By adding a public-ish comments section, it could make Stories more engaging. However, whether Instagram will archive or completely delete comments once a Story expires remains unclear.