Instagram’s Stories aren’t Intrusive Enough - Update ⚠️
Shown above, Instagram’s new Stories feature is a major threat to Snapchat. With Stories the question arises, has Instagram not forced Stories down our throats enough?
I’ve found myself forgetting that the Stories feature exists and having to remind myself that this feature exists. I pondered why this is and figured out that scrolling down your Instagram feed is the enemy of Stories (by design).
As shown above, by scrolling down my feed, the Stories bar vanishes. Instagram Stories have not been engrained in my mind and Instagram has not done anything to create viewership behaviors around Stories, except place them atop the Feed.
To increase Story viewership, Instagram needs to consider a more clever approach. Instagram’s current approach makes sense for smaller screens such as an iPhone 5S, however this behavior is silly on larger screens such as my iPhone 6 Plus. The Stories section should be a floating bar on the top of my feed as I scroll down on the phablet sized screens.
It goes to show that even multi-billion dollar companies do not take full advantage of the different screen-sizes of flagship smartphones.
Strangely, this “polite”, unimposing behavior is found in Facebook’s News Feed.
Update!
I originally published this article in 2016.
Since then, Instagram has changed their approach.
If you have enough accounts that you are following, Instagram will show stories in the middle of your feed.
This is a smart move as it pushes the Live feature more while allowing the original location to eventually be repurposed for Instagram TV (more on this later).
Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to be pushy with your designs!
