Instagram Plus arrives to view stories in secret

The central element of the new offer concerns total control over the dynamics of stories, the app’s most used sharing tool. Subscribers can in fact view other people’s content without appearing in the list of viewers, guaranteeing anonymity that overturns the current rules of social transparency of the social network. At the same time, the service allows you to monitor how many people have viewed your content and introduces the possibility of creating unlimited recipient lists, overcoming the constraint of the single list reserved for close friends for more precise segmentation of your audience.

The package also includes tools aimed at improving the visibility and lifespan of posts. Plus users can extend a story’s stay for an additional twenty-four hours and use the “Spotlight” option once a week to highlight a piece of content at the top of the followers bar. On the interaction front, animated “Superlikes” and a search function within the list of viewers are introduced, which eliminates the need to manually scroll through the entire list to check for the presence of a specific profile among those who have viewed the content.

Despite the low prices that emerged from the first tests, with monthly fees fluctuating between one and two dollars depending on the region, the move raises questions about the real reception of the public. While the success of Snapchat+, which recently surpassed twenty-five million subscribers, demonstrates the existence of a market for exclusive social features, Meta faces growing user impatience with the proliferation of digital subscriptions. The future of the service will depend on the outcome of this pilot phase and the company’s ability to justify the cost of previously unchargeable functions.