Instagram Stories can now be cross-posted as Facebook Stories, the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant confirmed earlier this week, adding that the functionality is presently rolling out to users on a global level, reportedly starting with the United States. The feature ships in the form of a toggle you can check on the Share interface of the app and is seemingly rolling out to both the Android and iOS version of the service. The gradual rollout began on Thursday or possibly even earlier but has yet to be completed on a global level. However, if you happen to be located in the United States, chances are that you’re already able to set up your Instagram Stories in a way that will see them being automatically cross-posted to Facebook.
Facebook Stories launched in early 2017 as part of a limited test and eventually became available worldwide, serving as a counterpart to the popular feature of Instagram which was in turn inspired by a virtually identical functionality of Snapchat. Recent reports suggest that Facebook Stories are yet to take off primarily due to a general lack of content, with the service itself still being limited to only certain creators. However, cross-posting from Instagram Stories is apparently rolling out to everyone and should provide the largest social media network on the planet with a temporary fix to its problem, at least until it refines Facebook Stories and makes sure they’re capable of growing on their own, in addition to improving the Facebook camera tool which remains somewhat underwhelming compared to the capabilities of Instagram.
The social media company is presumably seeking to completely intertwine its offerings at some point in the future, allowing users to cross-post their content from Instagram, Facebook, Messenger (Day), WhatsApp, and similar platforms within its service ecosystem. Instagram itself continues to grow at a relatively rapid pace and presently boasts over 800 million users, seemingly being on the right track to hit the one-billion mark in late 2018. As Stories are one of the app’s most popular features, the Facebook-owned company is expected to expand on this functionality in the future and additionally ennoble the ephemeral aspect of its photo-sharing service.