Instagram is adding comments to Stories, pulling users out of their DMs and back in front of advertisers

Instagram is letting users leave a comment under their mutual’s stories.

A new feature for Instagram’s Stories encourages community — the company just doesn’t want this activity happening in closed groups away from advertisers.

The social-media behemoth is launching a new tool that lets users leave comments under their followers’ Stories. Only followers can see these comments, and only the people a user follows back can leave a comment. Users can also turn off the feature.

The rise of private messaging and closed groups has created a wave of change across social media, and has particularly influenced users’ posting behavior. This new tool, for instance, combines Gen Z’s two favorite features: Stories and DMs.

“If you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in Stories, and they spend more time in Stories than they do in Feed,” Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said on a podcast episode with venture capitalist Harry Stebbings. “Actually, at one point a couple years ago, I think I put the entire Stories team on messaging.”

One consequence of users spending more time in Instagram DMs is that there are fewer eyeballs for advertisers to target through Meta’s powerful marketing platform. If this feature can successfully encourage users to start conversations within a Story instead of in DMs, they’ll be more likely to keep swiping through Stories that show ads (a win for Instagram).

These comments exist as temporary conversations since Stories auto-delete after 24 hours.

Some influencers are excited by the potential of building on community within Stories and promoting more conversations among their followers.

“It’s going to make Stories feel more like livestreaming and I wonder if that’s where things are trending,” said influencer Ariana Nathani. “It’s obviously going to keep people in the Stories feed for a lot longer, which I’m excited about as someone who posts more Stories than in-Feed posts.”

Influencer Anushka Purohit said they are excited about the feature because of how it will encourage more public conversations.

“I’ve been waiting for a feature like this for so long because I’m always in a dilemma of whether I want to post something on my Story or on my Feed because I want there to be conversations about everything I post,” Purohit said.

Instagram has also started rolling out a new design for likes on posts and Reels. With the new design, some likes appear as a floating heart alongside a person’s profile photo. When a user taps the floating heart, they are sent to a DM chat with the person.