Instagram has just launched a new ‘Add Yours’ sticker for its Stories
With every milestone TikTok achieves, Instagram is surely not far behind. Not one to settle for second-best, Instagram, as with it’s parent (Facebook and Fam), has formed what can only be described as an “arch-enemy” relationship with TikTok. For this latest scoop, Instagram has just launched a new ‘Add Yours’ sticker for its Stories.
The sticker supposedly enables users to prompt others to respond to their Stories, thus improving Story-engagement, while also creating opportunities to have deeper discussions via reply threads to Story posts.
To Add…
The ‘Add Yours’ sticker will be available within the Stories frame as a new default option. Use of the sticker is fairly simple. For example, if you would use the Hashtag ‘#OOTD’, you can then make use of the sticker to basically prompt others to respond to your Story; maybe with their own #OOTD post even.
When users respond, they’re then added to the sticker’s profile bubble listing which, when tapped, allows users to go through all other responses within the thread. It mainly gives users the ability to build response chains within Stories which can help improve engagement.
It awfully sounds a lot like TikTok’s ‘Duet’ feature, which often has other users adding to the Duet chain, allowing for long, interactive streams that make use of various pieces of content that relate to a central theme. It has that vibe of community to it, without taking away from each participant’s individuality. TikTok has, again, managed to introduce a seemingly normal function and turn it into something revolutionary, partly explaining the efforts of Instagram to come up with something similar.
Logically however, it does make sense. TikTok is seeing huge engagement and Instagram, who wants to simply keep users from migrating away, will latch on to whatever it can in order to do the same; even if it means having to come up with what is essentially a ‘Xerox’ copy of its rival’s functionality. To add, Instagram, much like its parent, isn’t the best when it comes to introducing new ideas, which might be a strong deterrent to its new push to win back younger audiences. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently noted that Facebook, and subsequently its host of apps, will prioritize catering to young adults in order to maintain relevance and build higher engagement with the youth, thereby augmenting the company’s overall longevity. The new direction is, in part, a direct response to internal findings that show a steady decline in younger user usage over the past decade.
The Wrap
With regards to Facebook, the reason Instagram also begins to struggle with maintaining appeal to younger users lies the fact that it, like Facebook, lacks the cultural nous and understanding as to what exactly younger audiences respond to. Notice how this new ‘Add Yours’ sticker looks more like a rehash of TikTok’s ‘Duet’ and not really something fresh out of Instagram’s RnD labs. It’s because that, again, Instagram lags a bit behind its major competitors in identifying what gets younger people’s attention and, even more so, what elements keep them engaged.
In a way, at least the new stickers do add another layer of engagement, even if just by a negligible margin. Perhaps if Instagram innovates outside the scope of Facebook, as its own entity, then it may yet produce something that can give even TikTok a run for its money. If Instagram can further invest into properly identifying the key usage trends and behaviors among younger audiences, then we may yet see that once-popular Instagram again.
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