Instagram Testing 'Group Stories' Feature After Facebook Drops It

Instagram has introduced a number of updates and features ever since its inception, especially the various video updates to its popular Stories feature. Now, months after Facebook rolled out its Group Stories feature, only to subsequently phase it out last month, Instagram seems to be working on adopting it. The development seems to be confirmed by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who has found a test code for a Group Story feature on Instagram. Sharing it on Twitter, Wong has also added a few screenshots.

Using this feature, a person will be able to share Stories with a group of people, which can go beyond your list of close friends. The Story would only be visible to members of that group message thread. This is great for sharing certain moments from a trip with a small group of people. Of course, since the feature is still in the testing phase, there is no guarantee that it will roll out anytime soon.

As revealed by Jane Manchun Wong, other features include GIF story replies, a new Explore peek UI and a comments/discussion sticker. Other new features that have been tested this year include birthday picker for the Android app, new boomerang modes, new grid layout mode for Stories, a new set of colourful icons for story camera modes, and more. To use GIF stickers for stories, the app could bring support for the image format to Stories which was previously available for replies in users’ DMs.