Instagram introduces new interactive stickers for Stories

Instagram announced a handful of new features for storiesincluding new interactive ways to share music, photos and videos.

The most intriguing new feature is called Reveal, and when applied, it blurs the content of a story post. The only way for viewers to see the post is to send a DM to the person who shared it. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri he said that direct messages are an increasingly important part of the platform and that Stories and DMs are responsible for the majority of Instagram’s growth. Requiring a DM to view content is the next evolution of this – and will no doubt be used as an engagement hack by creators hoping to increase engagement on their Stories.

Another feature, Frames, puts a Polaroid overlay on images that start out gray. When users shake the phone, a photo appears – like many people do with real Polaroid photos. Which is fun, because you’re really no should shake Polaroids and the company itself tells people not to do that as the film is developed (“We recommend placing the developed photo in a pocket or bag to hide it from strong light”). The Frames feature was the first introduced during Coachella in April.

Instagram is also adding a music-based template feature that allows users to share music to their Stories using prompts like “favorite song from album X” or “if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life.” Called Add Yours Music, it builds on the existing photo story prompt model.

Instagram has been undergoing changes aimed at boosting users’ original content. The biggest change in this regard came earlier this week, when the company said it would make reposted or aggregated content essentially invisible in recommendations, replacing it with the original version of the post. Importantly, though, recommended content from accounts you don’t follow is more in focus than ever – not exactly comforting news for creators who are upset that they’re not reaching as many followers.