Instagram is introducing a new feature called Private Story Likes, which allows you to like someone's Instagram Story without having to send them a direct message. Previously, whatever answer you wrote to someone about a Story, whether it was an emoji or a full-fledged message, appeared in their DM inbox; with this new feature, you can express your gratitude for a Story without filling up the user's DMs.
“So now, as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video. “And if you tap on it, it’ll send the author of that story a like, and that like will show up in the viewer sheet, not in your DM thread with them.”
❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.
Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw
Notably, Stories will not include like counts, which is a significant departure from the strategy taken by Instagram for users' main feeds. Instagram (which is now owned by Meta) spent more than two years experimenting with concealing like counts on the main feed before deciding to leave them up by default, though users can choose to hide them on their own posts.
When you check at a Story's view sheet, you can see who left a like on your Stories, but you won't see a public total for likes on Stories. “The idea here is make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit,” Mosseri said.