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Instagram for iOS working on the ability to like Stories

With Instagram revamping its Story feature over the past few months, soon users may be able to not only react and send GIFs but like people’s Stories as well.

According to leaker and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram is working on the ability to like a Story as well as put a like multiple times. With that, the social network could be planning a new metric for users reacting to Stories.

Liking a post is very important for Instagram’s metric. In June, the head of the social network, Adam Mosseri, shared how Instagram’s algorithm works.

Each part of the app – Feed, Explore, Reels – uses its own algorithm tailored to how people use it. People tend to look for their closest friends in Stories, but they want to discover something entirely new in Explore. We rank things differently in different parts of the app, based on how people use them. 

In his blog post, Mosseri explains that information about a post, about a person that posted, user’s activity, and history of interacting with someone is crucial for the algorithm to properly work.

With likes on Stories, Instagram could take a similar approach to what it does on a live broadcast with the ability to long-press for multiple likes.

Not only that, the social network started notifying its users that the swipe-up gesture is going away and will be replaced by a sticker link. According to Instagram, the same people that already had the swipe-up gesture will have this new sticker button.

The company has yet to announce whether liking Stories will make the cut and launch for all users. We’ll let you know if it does happen.

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