Meta has been upping its game recently, with Instagram working on a new way to integrate Stories and Reels, with a new experiment that sees some Reels playing for their full duration within the Stories flow. An interplay function? If anything, it helps further lean out the clutter that has amassed on Instagram’s UI over the years, while streamlining Stories playback.
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As seen in an example shared by Hammod Oh, some users are now seeing full-length Reels playing within the Stories stream, as opposed to getting the first 15 seconds and then having to tap through if they want to view the entire thing. It seems that Instagram is trying to eliminate that small degree of inconvenience of not being able to seamlessly watch Reels through the Stories window.
Such could be another way to lean into the popularity of the Reels format, while Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri has also noted that more people are now sharing content in Stories and DMs, as opposed to re-sharing posts to the main Feed, so it could also be a means to tap into that evolving usage behavior, keeping users engaged for longer.
On that note, Reels have also become a key focus for Meta, as it looks to re-ignite usage growth, and keep people in the app longer. A recent internal Meta report showed that Facebook usage increased in the 4th quarter of last year, largely driven by Reels consumption, which has risen 20% YoY. At the same time, original content creation in Meta’s apps is on the decline, with fewer people posting to both Facebook and Instagram than they have in the past.
That means that the time people are spending in both apps is increasingly shifting towards discovery and consumption, which is a credit to Meta’s evolving AI recommendations tools, which are now roping more people through its various displays of Reels content in both apps. People have been dunking on Meta for its ‘replication’ strategy, which has seen it roll out several copies of functions from Snapchat and TikTok, among others. Regardless, they work, and these engagement figures are another testament to its copycat approach.
The Wrap
With this in mind, further integration of Stories and Reels makes more sense, and it could be that Stories become an even bigger consideration for creators, but only if this experiment leads to an increase in Reels consumption. It’s still the early days, but it’s interesting to see how Meta’s looking to merge its different functionalities, which could have implications for your posting approach.
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