This is a new feature that is designed to clean up your DM inbox. Instagram has just introduced a new way for people to like and interact with your stories. Now you will be able to send a private message when someone shares an image or video that catches your eye. Previously what would happen is you could either respond to a story by sending the creator or direct message, or an emoji reaction, both of which would clutter up your inbox or the Creator’s inbox.
This normally would be very cluttering for the interface, and I have noticed this even before this feature was available as Answering some random question to some random story of some random creator out there messes with my contacts and my DM inbox.
When this feature goes online and you have total access to it, you will be able to find a new heart icon located between the send message pill and the Share icon. When you like someone’s post, you can just tap on their heart and it will show up on the viewer sheet, which normally a creator will be able to access by viewing their own story again. A viewer publicly won’t be able to see the like count on a story, but the creator will be able to see it. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram said That the idea here was to make sure that people could express and support each other while also keeping the DM interface a little bit clean as messaging is a key priority for them.
Instagram has a good record of frequently adding small but handy features like this, as last time the company added option to delete images and videos from a carousel and this new feature story likes would fundamentally change how you use Instagram, but it is a great addition to the entire way Instagram works.