Responding to someone’s Instagram Story can be daunting. Sure when it comes to IRL pal’s stories, you have no fear of replying instantly. But what about when the ‘sort of friends’ or even worse your crush posts a story that you want to reply to, surely you want to connect but the bold move of replying and taking that straight to the DMs can feel like a no man’s land. Instagram heard your cries so say bye to the fear of clogging up people’s DMs! Instagram Stories are adding likes so you can respond without cluttering their DMs.
Over the years the use of Instagram Stories has garnered a lot of popularity, whether it be from general users, influencers, celebrities to big companies. Back in January, Instagram began testing out the new feature of ‘Private Likes’ on Stories with select users, to see if this feature would elevate users’ experience and the platform in general.
This past Valentine’s Day to celebrate the day of love Instagram rolled out this new feature now available to everyone called ‘Private Story Likes’, which allows users to like somebody’s Insta Story without it going directly to their DMs. Prior to this any response you sent to someone about a story, whether it be an emoji or a full written response, would directly go to their messages. Now you can show your appreciation and spread the love without clogging the DMs.
When you view a Story, you will now be able to see a heart icon between ‘send message’ and the ‘little paper plane icon’. Instagram head Adam Mosseri showcased this in a video announcement of this new feature. Once you tap the heart icon it will send the author of the story a like and that will show up on the viewer sheet of their Story instead of creating a DM thread with them, the like will remain private.
The goal behind this new feature is to spread and show love and support to your online community and also to declutter the DM’s space. This allows the DM’s space to focus on having meaningful conversations between individuals. Stories will not have like counts, unlike posts on the main feed but you will be able to see who gave your story alike.
Now go send that like and spread the love!
