Instagram Tests Multiple Audience Lists for Stories
Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app, is currently in the testing phase of introducing multiple audience lists for its Stories feature. Stories, for those unfamiliar, are vertical, full-screen photos and videos that vanish after a 24-hour period.
This new development was announced by Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri. In an Instagram Broadcast, Mosseri stated, “Today, we started testing the ability to share your stories to multiple audience lists. This feature will empower users to share their stories with smaller, more specific groups, granting them greater control over their audience.”
He further added, “As someone who frequently uses the ‘Close Friends’ feature, I’m genuinely thrilled about the prospect of creating additional lists for various people in my life.”
To provide some context, Instagram already offers a “Close Friends” feature. This allows users to curate a list of specific friends with whom they can exclusively share their Stories. It’s a feature that has been particularly beneficial for users with public profiles, offering them a heightened sense of privacy on the platform.
With this new testing phase, Instagram seems to be taking things a step further. The platform is exploring the possibility of letting users share their Stories with distinct groups of followers. This means that users might soon be able to share specific updates with tailored groups of people or subsets of their followers.
To give users a glimpse of what’s in store, Mosseri showcased a preview of how these multiple lists for Stories might appear on Instagram. Through a screenshot, he demonstrated how one could opt to share, for instance, a photo of sushi with various groups like “Close Friends,” “SF Foodies,” “Siblings,” and “Travel Crew.”
In terms of new features, Instagram has been quite active lately. Just last year, in September 2022, they globally launched a feature that lets users upload extended, seamless Stories that can last up to a full minute without any interruptions. Additionally, in December, they introduced “Candid Stories.” This dual-camera feature, which bears a striking resemblance to the photo-sharing app BeReal, nudges users to capture a photo using both their front and rear cameras at the same time. An interesting twist is that users can only view their friends’ “Candids” after they’ve uploaded their own to the platform.