Eye on Social Media: Stories Are Changing How We Post

Live and Direct! Social Media isn’t slowing down. Once unique to Snap, Stories are now on nearly every single platform.

If you’re reading this and thinking SnapWhat??? This link tells you what it is and charts its brief history.
 
When young people started fleeing Facebook in 2013 to avoid being on the same social media platform as their parents it tried to buy Snapchat for 3 Billion Dollars. Facebook had already bought Instagram and would soon buy Whatsapp for 19 billion US dollars. (both now also have Stories or variants).

These platforms are now adding live video so users can create and share. Even Twitter users can stream live video with Periscope. Snap and live video feels more realistic and in many ways removes barriers to content creation.
 
Jamaicans readily embraced Snapchat (when it was still called that). As Panmedia noted then, Snapchat featured Jamaicans’ stories for a day, in 2015.
 
While stories (and, of course, snaps) should be candid and spontaneous, many have opinions about the kinds of photos that belong on Instagram. Social influencers impose unofficial rules about Instagram posting. These include: too many posts in a day, flooded feeds, ugly food pictures and several other things. High fashion bloggers (and hipsters) are even more unforgiving about not using the gram “properly.”

(Do it for the gram and make sure it looks good!)
 
Stories however, give users a chance to post real-time, fleeting…”I don’t really want this on my permanent record” content.
 
Facebook stories aren’t taking off so far, but Facebook Live usage is increasing in Jamaica and elsewhere. While live videos remain on pages for later viewing, and Facebook is still helping us remember days gone by with its memories feature, stories are here for a bit and gone…24 hours later, encouraging us to stay captive.