Instagram Stories allow users to share their activities with their followers, but the stories are often open to prying eyes of strangers and, in the case of students, their parents! To safeguard students from unwanted attention on Instagram, the social media site seems to be testing out a new feature going by the name of ‘School Stories’, which is basically a school-based version of regular ‘Stories’, reports TechCrunch.
Tipster Jane Manchun Wong has been credited with leaking the news; as he has shared screenshots of the code that mentions the presence of a new Stories mode. While Instagram has yet to share any details regarding the development, the update is expected to allow users within a school to share Stories among each other. The words ‘add to school story description’ is visible on the screenshots shared by Wong; with additional lines claiming that Instagram will allow community members (those who are part of the school) to view Stories.
Furthermore, the images of the code show that the social media platform will “manually review” school Stories in order to ensure that “the community is safe;” and a URL-based feature, also pointed out by Wong, shows that Instagram intends to allow deep sharing of Instagram Stories outside the platform, a feature expected to help celebrities and businesses cross-post content.
The School Stories feature has hitherto been tested in the earlier part of the year when Instagram explored the possibility of a similar feature meant for college students. The reports of this testing entailed that not only could students view Stories within a community; they would also be able to search for them through community lists for direct messaging. A similar feature had been experimented by Snapchat, which has already been released as ‘Our Campus Stories’ feature.
Facebook is also working out kinks and new features for Stories on the social media platform, and users have recently been able to access holiday Stories; a feature which allowed posts for Halloween, and is expected to be extended to other holidays. While the presence of the code does not in any way confirm its fruition, Instagram may nonetheless be assured of attracting a bigger crowd of students if and when it did roll out.
