Instagram Stories now support mentions, links, and Boomerang

Today Instagram is adding some new features to Stories, the section it initially ripped off from Snapchat, but then made it better. Last month Stories started being featured in Instagram's Explore tab, for example.

As part of Instagram 9.7, which is rolling out through the iTunes App Store for iOS, Google Play Store for Android, and Windows Store for Windows 10, Stories now support Boomerang videos. Boomerang is also a standalone app that lets you create short looping videos that pretty much behave like GIFs, but now these can be shown in Stories too. If you swipe right from your feed you'll access the Stories camera, where a new selection is present - you can choose between normal image snapping and Boomerang mode, which stitches together a burst of photos into a mini-video that plays forward and backward automatically. Then you can share this to your story.

You can now mention people in Stories, the same way you would in captions and comments. Type "@" followed by a username and select the person you're referring to. Their username will be underlined in your story, and people who tap on that will be taken straight to their profile. When you're mentioned in someone's story, you get a notification.

Verified accounts now have the possibility of adding links into their stories. When this happens, you'll get a "See More" link at the bottom of a story. This is currently in testing, so hopefully in the future it will be open to all accounts, not just celebs.

Source | Via