If you haven’t noticed it yet, for the past few years Facebook has been slowly but surely injecting its identity into their other really popular app (some would say, more popular app), Instagram. Now it looks like they’re bringing anther level of integration as they seem to be testing out a way that you can cross-post your Facebook Story onto your Instagram Stories. Currently, you can do that from Instagram to Facebook but they are probably keen on having it vice-versa as well.
Noted reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong posted a screencap on her Twitter account about the option to share your Facebook Story on Instagram. She also said that Facebook’s Alexandru Voica shared that they are testing out this option so that they can simplify and improve on “how Stories work across apps”. They say you may have different audiences for your Facebook and Instagram so this is an easy way to reach both.
Facebook is working on cross-posting Stories to Instagram pic.twitter.com/uH2w3VVnSe
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 9, 2020
To be able to share your Facebook Story, you need to go to the Privacy to review who you’re sharing it with. Under the usual Public, Friends, Custom, and Hide Story From, you will see a toggle to Share Story to Instagram. If you turn that on it will probably be the setting for your future Facebook Stories too. This test is probably out of the internal testing and is now being tested out with selected users.
The problem would be if some of your followers are both on Facebook and Instagram. Hopefully, they are able to find a way to sync up data so that people who’ve already seen your Story on one app will not be shown it on the other. Seeing them on both may actually cause people to close Stories as it can be annoying or a waste of time.
This is probably also one of their steps towards the unification of its Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram Direct chat features. This has long been rumored as an eventual step that Facebook is taking for all its properties, which may be good news for some but bad news for others, especially those who are privacy advocates. Let’s see if this feature eventually makes it to everyone else.
