Instagram tests its version of the retweet but thru Stories

Peo­ple in the test group can share oth­er people’s pub­lic posts to their own Sto­ries, and their fol­low­ers can tap on the shared post to see the original.

Insta­gram’s most glar­ing fea­ture omis­sion is the abil­i­ty for a per­son to reshape some­one else’s post with every­one they fol­low a la Twitter’s retweet and Facebook’s share but­tons. But that’s begin­ning to change.

Insta­gram has begun test­ing a way for peo­ple to share some­one else’s pub­lic post to their own fol­low­ers through Sto­ries, an Insta­gram spokesper­son said on Wednes­day, con­firm­ing TechCrunch’s ear­li­er report.

Accord­ing to TechCrunch, peo­ple can share some­one else’s pub­lic post appear­ing in their main feed to their own Sto­ry by tap­ping on the exist­ing share but­ton that’s used to pri­vate­ly share the post with friends through Instagram’s direct mes­sag­ing fea­ture. A new option enables peo­ple to add the post to their Sto­ry so that any­one who fol­lows them will be able to see the post when view­ing their Sto­ry with­in 24 hours of the post being added. Peo­ple can tap on the reshared post to see the orig­i­nal version.

Insta­gram will not noti­fy peo­ple when some­one reshares their pub­lic post in a Sto­ry, accord­ing to the spokesper­son, but peo­ple can pre­vent oth­ers from reshar­ing their posts to Sto­ries by tog­gling off the option with­in Instagram’s in-app settings.

Dur­ing the test, Insta­gram will only count reshare-relat­ed impres­sions when peo­ple tap on the reshared post to view the orig­i­nal ver­sion, the spokesper­son said.

If and when Insta­gram expands the test beyond the small per­cent­age of users cur­rent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing, it could sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand the reach of brands’, pub­lish­ers’ and influ­encers’ organ­ic posts as well as ads in the same way that Twit­ter’s retweet and Face­book’s share but­tons already do.

And if peo­ple prove inter­est­ed in shar­ing oth­ers’ posts on Insta­gram, that could buoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­pa­nies to use the Face­book-owned pho­to-and-video app to recoup the organ­ic reach they stand to lose on Face­book fol­low­ing the social network’s most recent News Feed change.

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