Instagram has began testing an experimental feature on its service that lets you share Stories directly to Facebook’s core app, a move that is likely intended to help increase the number of interactions with stories on Facebook. That means Instagram users will soon be able to mix content between the photo sharing app and Facebook’s main app, assuming the feature being tested makes it to a final release, and should that happen there is no indication of when it may be implemented.
The idea of moving the Instagram Stories content over to the main Facebook app is seen as an attempt by the social media giant to drum up interest for the feature on Facebook. The Menlo Park, California-based social networking site began testing Stories on its mobile app in January of this year, allowing users to apply different filters and add stickers to their pictures and videos just like with Instagram Stories. After adding Instagram-like Stories to Facebook, however, the two functionalities still maintained a level of individuality for the most part. Once ported over to the core Facebook app, the direct-sharing functionality for Stories is expected to help build up momentum for Facebook’s version of the feature, which has not substantially gained much traction since its launch.
To further help Facebook Stories take off, the social networking site tested the Stories feature on the desktop version of Facebook last month, though it remains unclear when the company plans to roll out the tool to desktop users in a final release. The pilot test reveals that the desktop variant comes in the form of a module located on the right side of the home page instead of at the top of the page, a major departure from the mobile version of Facebook Stories. Instagram was the first to add Stories to its service, at least within Facebook’s ecosystem, as Snapchat has had a similar feature for quite some time before Instagram. Since its launch on Instagram back in August of last year, the popularity of Stories has soared higher than Snapchat’s version. However, it remains to be seen whether combining the content between Instagram and Facebook will help boost the popularity of Facebook Stories as well.