Instagram has gone ahead and introduced a new way for users to like each other’s stories. The addition of what’s called Private Story Likes allows you to like stories without entering the person’s DM.
The main reason behind the introduction of this feature, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said, is to clear some clutter from chats. Right now, liking a story creates a new chat entry, which the story owner can reply to or react to.
With Private Story Likes, no such entry will be created. Instead, on the screen showing everyone who has viewed the story, a new heart icon will appear beside the name of the person who has liked it. There’s no word on whether the owner of the story will receive a notification for such a like or not.
Anyway, the new Private Story Like icon will appear beside the space where you can type a message on a story. Just tapping on it will let you like the story and inform the poster about the same.
❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️
Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.
Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
Mosseri said in a video he posted on Twitter, “The idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other but also to clean up DMs a little bit. I said at the beginning of the year that messaging was a key priority for us, and a big piece of that is focusing DMs on the conversations between you and the people that you care about.”
A few weeks ago, Instagram introduced a new set of features that make it easier for users to remove posts, comments, and other activities from the platform. They can now bulk-delete or archive all of their content including posts, stories, IGTV, and Reels, aside from interactions like comments, likes, story sticker reactions, and more.