Following last week’s rollout of the engagement-driven Blend feature for Reels, Instagram is now developing another tool—this time aimed at boosting interaction within Stories.
As shown in a preview shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram is experimenting with a new feature called “Storylines”—a collaborative Stories format that allows you and your friends to contribute to a shared Story thread within the app.
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Instagram Experiments with “Storylines” to Boost Collaboration in Stories
Following the introduction of Blend for Reels, Instagram is now exploring new ways to increase interaction within Stories—its other high-engagement format. As revealed by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, the platform is working on a feature called “Storylines,” which allows users to build collaborative Stories with their friends.
According to Instagram’s description, Storylines would let friends you follow back “link a new, related story to your story,” creating an expanded, multi-perspective narrative around shared experiences. For example, if you and your friends attend a party or concert, others in your group could add their own Stories to yours, forming a richer, shared sequence of content around the same event.
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If your Stories are public, your friends’ connections would also be able to view and potentially contribute to the Storyline—broadening reach and engagement for everyone involved. If your account is private, non-followers would still see that you’ve contributed to a collaborative Storyline (but not the content itself), which could encourage new connection requests.
This aligns with Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s emphasis on increasing interaction in 2024, especially in DMs and Stories—now the primary sources of user engagement on the platform. As user behavior continues shifting away from public posts and more toward private sharing, Instagram is focusing on making these formats “stickier” to reinforce its strength as a social connection tool in contrast to TikTok’s entertainment-first model.
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Whether Storylines will eventually roll out remains uncertain—Instagram hasn’t launched live testing yet—but the concept holds more promise than Blend, which some users feel strips away the personal, curated nature of Reels sharing. Storylines, on the other hand, could foster deeper social interactions by bringing together multiple voices around a common moment or interest.
Of the two experiments, Storylines seems more likely to resonate—if it sees the light of day.
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