Twitter recently has unveiled its Super Follows feature that allows users with a certain number of followers to provide exclusive content for a fee. Now, Instagram is also building its own version of the ‘Super Follows’ feature that will allow creators to publish exclusive content on Stories which is likely to come with a subscription payment. It is already known that the social media giant has been busy with a series of initiatives that helps in boosting creators with quite some monetization techniques. The new ‘Exclusive Stories’ feature is discovered by reverse engineer and full-stack Android developer Alessandra Paluzzi.
Instagram has recently confirmed to TechCrunch that the screenshots of the feature circulating across social media are from an internal prototype that’s now in development, but not yet being publicly tested. Sadly, Instagram declined to share further details saying they’re not at a place to talk about this feature yet. Now, this confirms the feature is indeed in the works. Taking a look at the screenshot, one would understand that the Exclusive Stories feature shows an advanced stage of development which means that the launch could probably take place in a month or two. From the screenshots shared by Paluzzi, we can further understand that the paywalled posts will be set apart from the regular stories. We can expect the Exclusive Stories marked with a purple heart icon.
Now, this might work just like how Stories for ‘Close Friends’ works. Instead of the green star icon, you might get a purple heart icon. If you’ve not paid the charges, you will get to see a message across the story that reads “Only members of @creator-name can see this story.”
Furthermore, the company will also let the creators save their Exclusive Stories to a Highlight. This will be helpful for new members as they will have something to view as soon as they subscribe. Exclusive stories are only one part of the company’s plans to boost creator monetization tools.
Instagram’s Adam Mosseri back in May told The Information that the company was exploring subscriptions along with other new features such as NFTs. On a similar note, Paluzzi also found references to the NFT feature and Collectibles on Instagram. The screenshot demonstrates how these digital collectibles could appear on any creator’s profile. While Instagram has not made any public announcement about these features specifically, during the Creator Week in June, Mosseri said:
We need to create if we want to be the best platform for creators long term, a whole suite of things, or tools, that creators can use to help do what they do. […] I think it’s super important that we create a whole suite of different tools, because what you might use and what would be relevant for you as a creator might be very different than an athlete or a writer. And so, largely, [the creator monetization tools] fall into three categories. One is commerce — so either we can do more to help with branded content; we can do more with affiliate marketing…we can do more with merch. The second is ways for users to actually pay creators directly — so whether it is gated content or subscriptions or tips, like badges, or other user payment-type products. I think there’s a lot to do there. I love those because those give creators a direct relationship with their fans — which I think is probably more sustainable and more predictable over the long run.
