Over the past few weeks, Instagram has been testing a new Stories presentation that hides Stories after a certain number. Some stories are now only displaying the first three frames, along with a tiny prompt in the top left corner saying, ‘Show all’.
This would be easy to miss and potentially means that if you are posting more than 3 frames to your Story, those after 3 are significantly less likely to be seen.
As noted by Flannery:
“This obviously will lead to a significant decrease in views and reach, given that most are unlikely to actively go and click ‘show all’.”
Why is Instagram doing this?
It is unknown at the moment what their motives are behind this movement, yet there are some theories as to why. First, they may have seen how popular TikTok is and want to replicate the fast-paced scrolling with Instagram stories, so people are tapping away all the time. Second, it may be tied into Instagram’s Reels-first focus. Or, it may just be a technical capacity thing, and Instagram can’t make it work beyond a certain frame count.
What Instagram is doing here seems backward, however, with Reels now becoming the key growth element on Instagram, this may be a subtle push to get people focused on Reels instead.
What does this mean for you?
If you are regularly posting over 3 stories, it may be time to reduce those, focusing on quality, not quantity. Try to post 3 stories and if you do post more, then give your viewers a prompt to press that ‘Show more’ button at the top. And, if you post a lot of video stories as opposed to pictures, then it may be time for you to start posting reels instead.
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