Instagram Introduces ‘Candid Stories’: How It Differs from Regular Insta Story

Instagram continues to innovate despite facing criticism for imitating features from other platforms like TikTok. The photo and video-sharing social networking service recently unveiled five new features aimed at enhancing user experience and connectivity among friends. These features include ‘Notes,’ ‘Candid Stories,’ ‘Group Profiles,’ ‘Add Yours Nominations,’ and ‘Collaborative Collections.’ While Notes is already available to all users, the others are currently undergoing testing.

New Features Overview

Among the upcoming features, Instagram is testing ‘Candid Stories,’ a feature that allows users to capture and share candid pictures through their Instagram stories. Unlike regular Instagram stories, Candid Stories will only be visible to users who also share their own candid stories, fostering a sense of authenticity and real-time interaction among users.

Inspiration from BeReal

The concept of ‘Candid Stories’ bears resemblance to BeReal, a social media photo-sharing app launched in 2020. BeReal enables users to share unfiltered and authentic photos with friends, albeit limited to once a day. As one of Instagram’s competitors, BeReal’s approach to encouraging genuine content sharing seems to have influenced Instagram’s new feature.

Testing Phase and Implementation

Instagram mentioned in a blog post that the testing of ‘Candid Stories’ extends to Facebook Stories as well. Users can capture candid moments using the stories camera, the multi-author story at the top of the feed, or through daily notification reminders. For those who prefer not to receive daily notifications, the option can be disabled in settings.

Future Availability

Currently, the ‘Candid Stories’ feature is in the testing phase, and there’s no official confirmation regarding its widespread availability to all Instagram users. However, the introduction of this feature underscores Instagram’s commitment to fostering authentic and real-time interactions among its user base.

As Instagram continues to evolve its platform, users can anticipate more features aimed at enhancing connectivity and facilitating genuine content sharing within the community.