In a bid to encourage more users to create Stories on its platform, Facebook is running a test that allows users to share links in Facebook Stories.
Facebook has been trying to make its Stories a success for some time, but they still haven’t caught on as much as their Instagram equivalent. There are currently over 150 million daily users on Stories, and that is a number to take seriously. To boost the feature among brands and publishers, in particular, Facebook is now starting to test the ability for users to share links in their Stories.
The test was spotted by Valentin Blanchot of Siècle Digital and shared in a post on the site. Social Media Today reached out to Facebook for comment, and received the following statement:
“Many people come to Facebook to share and have conversations about articles that interest them. So, we’re testing the ability to share links in Stories, just like you can on News Feed.”
The organic reach and referral traffic of Pages and publishers have been suffering significantly for some time now due to Facebook’s constant algorithm changes, and this new feature could help them recoup this to a certain extent. It may also encourage more users to create more Stories and thus boost numbers on the feature.
Facebook has said that Stories is the format of the future for social sharing – perhaps this is the big move that will help this become a reality. It certainly needs to watch carefully though lest it wants to see the Stories format turn spammy. On Instagram, Facebook added the 10,000-follower limit to keep this from happening.
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