Facebook-owned Instagram may have copied the Stories feature from Snapchat but over the past couple of months, it has been rapidly firing updates for the feature to make it even more useful for those who have begun to like it more than the Snapchat counterpart. Instagram today announced that users can now send photo and video replies to their friends’ Stories.
Starting today, Instagram users can reply to stories with a photo or video. This means that they can respond to a story by either sending a selfie or a Boomerang.
In order to take advantage of this new functionality, users have to tap on the new camera button first and then select if they want to reply with a photo or video. The camera includes creative tools like stickers, filters, and Rewind all of which will be available.
When a user’s friend replies to their story with a photo or video, they will find it in their inbox where they can tap to view it. A sticker of the original story will only be visible to the user so that they know to which story the reply was made. As is the case with disappearing photos and videos in Direct, users’ friends will know if they replayed a reply or screenshot it.
The new functionality is available in the latest version of Instagram that’s out now for both iOS and Android.