Instagram tests letting more people share links in their Stories
It's doing so with a new sticker.
For the longest time, including links in Stories is something Instagram has only let a select few of its users do. Your account needs to have either been verified by the company or have passed the 10,000 follower milestone. Only then can you include a swipe-up link in your Stories. But in what could be a dramatic change for Instagram, it’s trying something different. The company told The Verge it recently started a test that gives a small subset of its users the ability to link to a website using a Stories sticker.
Whether the platform eventually allows everyone to share links in this way is up in the air. For now, Vishal Shah, Instagram’s head of product, told The Verge the goal is to track the types of links people post, as well as to ensure they don’t use the feature to push spam and misinformation. The company’s hope is to eventually transition to stickers as the primary way people access websites outside of the platform. “That is the sort of future system we would like to get to,” Shah told the outlet.
Whatever direction Instagram ends up going with this latest test, as of recently the company has been experimenting with some significant changes to how its platform works. It was not too long ago it seemed Instagram would never allow people to post content from their computers, but that changed last week when it began a test allowing some users to do just that. At around the same time it started a separate trial to see how people respond to seeing suggested posts throughout their feed.
