Why Instagram is Bringing Stories to the Explore Section

Back in August, Instagram debuted its Stories feature to encourage users to share more moments of their day.

More content on the platform means more engagement among users, especially at a time when more and more people seemed to hold off posting to Instagram until the absolute perfect photo or video was captured.

Instagram just announced that Stories will also appear at the top of the Explore tab in the mobile app.

In the announcement, Instagram said “More than 100 million people visit Explore every day to discover photos and videos from people they don’t yet follow. The new suggested stories section highlights the most interesting stories from across Instagram’s vast global community — and like the rest of Explore, the stories you’ll see are personalized to your interests.”

This is yet another update to Instagram’s Explore section, just weeks after videos were revamped within the section earlier in the summer.

And as Instagram continues to bring new features to the platform, it looks like Explore is a serious focus as a way of connecting and building the global community. One of the most common ways for people to discover new users is through tags in photos. For example, your favorite food blogger posts a picture and tags his or her best friend, a fashion icon in your city. It’s easy to see that new user’s photos and videos with just a couple of taps.

Read: 4 Ways To Use Instagram’s New Stories Feature For Your Business

There’s no signs of Instagram slowing down either. Every day, there are 4.2 billion likes and 95 million images posted from the 500 million users, 80% of which are outside of the United States.

At Social Media Week London in September, David Cuen, International Lead of Instagram’s Community, shared his team’s three core values for building a global community. Sign up for SMW Insider to watch his entire talk and learn how Instagram plans to continue growing their community around the world.

Advertisers on Instagram are also growing. A few weeks ago, Instagram surpassed 500,000 advertisers on the platform, and stated that 50% of Instagrammers follow a business, and 60% of people say they’ve learned about a product or service on Instagram.

Since Instagram is attracting both people and businesses, it seems natural that more features, intended for businesses and advertisers, will come to Stories.

Think of what Snapchat is doing with Stories and businesses, and imagine Instagram taking inspiration (or the same exact ideas), and integrating them into the Stories feature. While nothing is confirmed, it’s plausible that ads could appear in-between Stories or even in the middle of them.