Instagram Plus Brings Story Rewatch Counts, Custom Fonts and Extended Stories
- Snehal Pandey
- 2 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Instagram has officially introduced Instagram Plus, a new premium subscription that brings advanced Story insights, enhanced customization options, and exclusive engagement tools to the platform.
Instagram is about to embark on a new journey with the launch of Instagram Plus, which is a subscription program for those people who seek to take advantage of more customization options and analytics than the free Instagram offers. Although Instagram will continue to be entirely free, Instagram Plus will provide subscribers with a number of perks that are tailored for the needs of creators and influencers using Stories regularly.
As we can observe a tendency for social media platforms to introduce subscription services instead of earning money exclusively through advertising, we should note that Instagram seems to follow this trend. Indeed, it is not a secret that Snapchat+ and Telegram Premium were extremely successful, and it is time for Instagram to offer its subscription package too.
Instagram Plus Focuses on Stories, Insights and Personalization
In contrast to typical subscriptions, which limit access to core functionalities with a paywall, Instagram Plus appears to be offered as an additional functionality, as opposed to a complete overhaul. This subscription package relies on three core elements, namely improved social interactions, improved story metrics, and profile enhancements.
One such metric that is receiving a lot of buzz is the ability to see how often one's stories were re-watched. While for content creators and companies, it provides useful information regarding what types of content generate more engagement, for regular users, it is merely an entertaining feature, which helps determine who exactly revisits one's stories on repeat.
This feature serves as one more piece of information about the behavior of one's audience, which is always welcome by any content creator.
Story Spotlight Could Help Users Gain More Visibility
Among the main features introduced in Instagram Plus are those like Story Spotlight. As its name suggests, the function helps to enhance the exposure of Stories posted by the user to his friends and followers.
Though the actual functioning process of this feature is not yet fully disclosed by Instagram, it is said that Stories posted by the user will get higher visibility than other Stories on the feed. This will be of great use for influencers and other professionals who rely heavily on Stories to reach out to their audiences.
With competition becoming fiercer on social media platforms, every new tool to gain maximum exposure is expected to draw lots of attention.
Multiple Story Audiences Bring Greater Sharing Control
In addition, Instagram Plus subscribers would be given access to the Multiple Story Audience feature that would enable them to enhance their options when it comes to sharing content on Instagram.
As things stand, users of Instagram only have the ability to make use of one list of Close Friends through which they can privately share Stories on the platform. Instagram Plus would give users the ability to make multiple audience groups customized for each social group.
This would mean that users can create audiences for their family, friends, workmates, clients, and others as required without having to frequently modify their privacy settings.
New Viewing and Search Tools Offer More Audience Insights
Moreover, Instagram is rolling out a number of features that would allow its users to know how much their Stories are being viewed by others.
The subscribers would be allowed to search through the list of people who viewed their Stories, which would make it simpler to understand whether or not certain individuals viewed their Stories. This could be very helpful for creators as well as for companies trying to monitor their interaction with certain viewers.
Further, Instagram Plus members would also be permitted to preview their stories without having to respond to them right away. All in all, Instagram seems to be quite focused on giving its users better insight into their audience’s behavior.
Stories Can Stay Live for 48 Hours
An additional improvement includes a new feature dubbed Story Extend. Usually, Instagram stories fade away after 24 hours. Using the Story Extend feature, Instagram Plus subscribers have the possibility to keep their stories alive for 48 hours.
The extra time frame might prove quite helpful for individuals seeking prolonged exposure of their content without the need to reshare posts.
It may prove especially helpful for those whose main method of interaction via Instagram are Stories.
Super Hearts Add New Ways to React
Instagram will also launch the Super Heart option, which is essentially a reaction system that is tailor-made for Instagram Stories.
In contrast to normal reactions on Instagram Stories, Super Heart will come with some additional animation options, thereby making the process more interactive.
Although the feature may be considered small when compared to the new data analysis option launched by the app, reactions have been quite popular on other social media platforms.
Profile Customization Gets a Major Upgrade
It’s not just about Instagram Stories when you subscribe to the Instagram Plus service. Instead, you can use a lot of profile customization options available through subscription.
Those would include such options as customizable app icons, font choice for your bio section, and more pins in case you wish to display additional posts on your profile. Note that Instagram lets you pin only a limited amount of posts on your account.
Thus, having more customization options would help users build their online image even better.
Post Directly to Your Profile Without Affecting Followers' Feeds
Among the many features provided with Instagram Plus is one of the more fascinating additions – the ability to upload content to one’s profile or highlights while not putting the content out there to followers’ feeds.
This will enable more flexibility on the part of users as far as arranging content goes and keeping profiles updated and looking good without cluttering up followers’ feeds.
This particular feature will prove extremely useful for businesses and influencers that have well-curated Instagram accounts.
Pricing Could Decide Instagram Plus Success
While it is official that Instagram has disclosed most of the features in Instagram Plus, there is one thing left to disclose: the price of subscription. It can be presumed that the subscription price would be key in deciding whether Instagram Plus would become a mainstream service or merely stay as an elitist tool for creators and advanced users.
For those who earn money using Instagram or use it for marketing purposes, or even post stories frequently on the app, features like Spotlight, rewatch statistics, prolonged story life span, and audience management might offer significant benefits and thus make it worth the price of subscription. Yet, some might say that the current free experience offered by Instagram suffices for them.
Moreover, there seems to be a general trend emerging within the realm of social media platforms towards experimenting with subscription business models in order to give their users more premium experiences without denying them access to their fundamental functionalities.
Instead of making users pay for the use of the basic version of their applications, companies are now giving them the opportunity to pay for certain additional services that make their experience on the platforms more engaging, personalized, and insightful.
While it is still not clear whether Instagram Plus will be as popular as Snapchat+ or Telegram Premium, one can say that Meta is banking on its users being ready to pay for more insightful social media experience.
In this sense, Instagram Plus might prove to be an integral aspect of future development of Instagram itself.