Facebook’s past comes back right into Instagram’s newest feature – users will now be able to post information from other apps directly to their Instagram Stories

The photo-sharing app decided that it is time to make users’ lives easier, by allowing them to share information from Spotify, for example, directly to their Instagram Stories, lasting for 24 hours. This way, users won’t have to screenshot and post.

However, looking back, this feature is not entirely new and innovative. Back in 2012, Facebook released Open Graph, which automatically posted songs users were listening to and stories they were reading directly to their Facebook feed. As expected, users were not thrilled by the extreme transparency and lack of control, so the company stopped pushing it further only a couple of years later.

Now, Facebook is tackling the issue a little different, allowing users to pick when they post rather than having it happen automatically.

Taking a look at Instagram’s history, we can easily tell and approve that the app hasn’t been permissive when it came to sharing information from the outside world. Hyperlinks don’t even work, except in profiles, and this is only one example. However, this was a conscious choice of the company, as they wanted to make sure that the content was a reflection of what a user created, and not what they curated from others. This strategy helped Instagram avoid some problems that Facebook still faces, such as viral fake news.

On the other hand, Stories is the part of the app that breaks its own rules, intentionally. Within this section, the app allows sharing of news stories, for example. Now, with the direct-sharing from other applications, people will be able to screenshot their Spotify playlists and post them, and so much more.

Mark Zuckerberg said that Stories will be an increasingly important part of the company’s future. The feature was first invented by a smaller competitor, Snapchat.

For now, we can only wait for the release of the update and try it out ourselves.

Source: bloomberg.com