Instagram Now Allows Commenting on Stories
Taylor Loren / Comments on Stories
Why It Matters: The ability to comment on Stories adds to the various ways Instagram has enabled engagement with Stories over time, including responding, reacting, and liking.
Given the time and effort that creators and brands invest in Stories, this update is likely to be welcomed. It provides creators and brands with another engagement signal and a new way to receive feedback at scale. For those who save Stories as Highlights, extending their visibility beyond 24 hours, positive comments offer social proof. When creators and brands collaborate on sponsored Stories content, comments provide an additional metric to measure performance.
However, this feature could foreshadow a bigger move by Instagram—the launch of a dedicated tab for Story Highlights. Instagram has tested several updates to Story Highlights, including making them more prominent and showing them in the feed. One notable development is the spotting of a dedicated tab for Story Highlights that would host all Highlights on their own profile grid tab, similar to Reels.
Instagram’s Adam Mosseri has also mentioned wanting to consolidate the profile grid and Highlights. If this becomes a reality, comments would likely be available on Story Highlights, just as they are for in-feed posts and Reels, standardizing Instagram's content formats and giving creators and brands the ability to showcase comments on this type of content.
