Social media titans like instagram and Facebook have noticed that their users have increased the output of their content in the story format. Instagram introduced the ability to post a story to a users profile in August of 2016, with parent company Facebook following suit in March of 2017. Since its introduction, buffer.com reports that in 2017, 150 million instagram users posted stories on a daily basis. That number grew dramatically in the following year, with about 500 million users posting stories daily in 2018. Facebook, after introducing the feature in 2017, noted 150 million users posting through the story feature in 2018.
No one is for sure, but this massive rise could be due to the fact the “story” feature only lets the post last for 24 hours, making the posts more live in the moment as opposed to the typical news feed format. This allows companies and users to reach their audience in a real time fashion. This trend is something that everyone should be keeping their eye on as it has the potential to shake up the conventional ways that companies use social media to reach their consumers.
