Instagram to Disappear its Swipe Up Feature!

Have you ever felt replying to a “Swipe Up” Story on Instagram, but couldn’t because of the limited advantages of this feature? 

In case you ever had this feeling, there is good news for you! 

Instagram is rolling out its new feature where users will no longer have access to its Swipe Up feature. The old Swipe Up feature is used to allow users to visit the external web pages. Through this, a verified user could add a link to the story that can be accessed by the viewers. However, this feature was available to only influencers with 10K followers and big brands & advertisers. 

Well, as we said, the feature is being discarded by the platform. Instead, Instagram is replacing it with its new feature – Link stickers. Through this feature, users can still visit external websites. Also, they will be able to use these stickers that have links embedded anywhere on the story. 

Furthermore, they will be able to select from a variety of stickers as well.

But, there is a slight difference between both the features. Swipe Up didn’t allow users to respond to a certain story but through Link stickers, users can respond to stories. Besides, it also offers greater creator control over users’ stories. 

Like any other stickers, creators can resize or place the stickers anywhere on their story for maximum engagement. 

Vishal Shah, Instagram’s former product head said that the stickers fit more with the way people use this platform. Moreover, they even wanted to streamline the story creation experience for the users.

Adding on, many users even reported that they got a notification stating that “Swipe links will soon be stickers.” 

According to Instagram, the new Link Story feature will be implemented from 30th August 2021. However, it started testing this feature earlier in June 2021. 

The change is really huge and fascinating because if the testing goes successful, even small brands and creators might have access to this special link sticker feature, which wasn’t available to them earlier. 

Nevertheless, if the feature gets accessible to nano and micro influencers, they can be immensely benefited from it. Link stickers will be a great way to expose their audience to new forms of content like influencers’ personal blogs, subscribing to their newsletters (if any), affiliate links, etc. Through this feature, they can direct their audience to their website without making any special post for the same. This will also help in driving more engagement. 

Instagram stickers not only makes your content more influential but even provides a plethora of good options to make Insta stories fun. 

This benefit wasn’t available to them before as influencers with a follower count above 10k could leverage the Swipe Up story format, with a separate commercial for the same. 

Hence, the link sticker feature had widened the scope for nano and micro influencers for creating content with a fresh approach and working with brands leveraging the new feature.

But for the testing stage, only limited users i.e., people having the privilege of the Swipe Up feature, will have access to this option as the platform wants to be sure before expanding this feature to a large number of users. 

Instagram has surely taken an amazing decision by introducing this new feature. Now, let’s see how it works in the future and proves to be advantageous to various brands & creators.