Instagram’s identity crisis deepens as she considers vertical storyline

In the immortal words of Derek Zoolander (who would have definitely loved Instagram), “who am I?”

Instagram is considering yet another big change to its platform. He’s working on a prototype of the vertically scrolling Stories stream, like TikTok.

Facebook, owner of Instagram, confirmed the new project to TechCrunch, who first reported the story after developer Alexander Puzzi posted a photo of the prototype on Twitter.

Puzzi told TechCrunch that he found the option by looking at Instagram’s backend code and was not yet live.

A spokesperson for the Facebook company also confirmed the feature to Mashable via email, pointing out that it was in the early stages of development.

“This is a first prototype and is not functional. It is not something we are currently testing on Instagram,” said the Facebook spokesperson.

Currently, users scroll through Instagram stories horizontally, tapping or dragging the right side of the screen to go forward or the left side to rewind. In contrast, TikTok’s flow is vertical, so users swipe up to access the next content. It’s no accident that Instagram’s dedicated Reels feed (Reels is the Instagram version of TikTok) is vertically oriented, as is its main post feed.

Reorienting the scrolling of stories isn’t the only big change potentially coming to Instagram. It also follows the major overhaul of the platform’s home screen less than three months ago. In this change, Instagram created the Reels tab and literally brought it to the fore. The change was a transparent attempt to give Reels a boost after people were mostly confused about the new format.

Instagram would also consider removing the ability to share feed posts with stories. This would be another big platform change, as stories have become the primary way people share other users’ content in their profiles.

What’s all this DIY, Instagram? It’s almost as if attempts to import all of TikTok’s short viral video content ~ thing ~ into a platform with the pre-existing purpose of sharing photos don’t go as smoothly as expected!

As TechCrunch points out, the vertical story format could be a first step towards unifying Instagram video content. Currently, Posts, Stories, Reels, and IGTV all host videos. There are too many options, then too many redundant needs to re-share content across multiple parts of Instagram.

Also, if the stories come close to the same format as the reels, there is a possibility that they could eventually merge into a single stream. This would send more people to Reels, which is great from an advertising perspective, as Reels generates an endless amount of consumable content without thinking – not just content from the people you follow.

In its attempts to follow TikTok, is Instagram losing its way? No, it happened a long time ago.

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