Facebook Stories Can Now Be Made Public

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Facebook users who allow public followers are now able to also share their Stories publicly for all to see.

Facebook launched its Snapchat-inspired Stories in March this year, giving users a way to share updates that disappear every 24 hours. Up until now, Stories have only been shared among friends, and have not been available publicly. However, users could soon start seeing Stories from people outside their network as well. In a bid to increase engagement on Stories, Facebook is starting to allow users who allow public followers to view their posts, to set their Stories to public.

https://twitter.com/carlosgil83/status/891511347568975872

A social media researcher for BMC Software, Carlos Gil, first noticed the feature and shared the news with multiple outlets. Facebook has now also confirmed the feature, and that it was rolled out in July. For the time being, only users have the ability to share their Stories publicly – Pages, which also got Stories recently, will probably have to wait, although there doesn’t seem to be a timeline for that roll out.

In a bid to increase engagement on Stories, Facebook now allows them to be viewed publicly

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To share a Story publicly, a user taps on the three dots menu, chooses edit story settings, and changes the privacy settings to “Public.” Users will be able to see a separate friends counter next to their normal viewer counter – giving them the ability to understand how many of their friends actually viewed a Story. Currently, only friends can actually reply directly to Stories.