Previously, responses sent to someone on a Story, whether an emoji or a full-on message, showed up as a response in their DM inbox. However, now with this new feature, users can show appreciation for a Story without clogging up the other person’s DMs, as per The Verge.
“So now, as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon. 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,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video.
Notably, Stories will not have like counts, which is a largely different approach than what Instagram has chosen for users’ main feeds.
The platform spent more than two years testing hiding like counts on the main feed before making the decision to leave them on by default, though users can opt to hide them on their posts.
As per The Verge, for likes on Stories, users won’t see a public count, though they can see who left a like on their Stories when they look at a Story’s view sheet.
“The idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit,” Mosseri said.