Beware Of Stalking People On Instagram’s New Stories Feature

It's mere coincidence that Instagram rolled out their new Stories feature at the exact same time that Ofcom announced that a typical adult in the UK spends an average of 25 hours on the internet per week. Now we have one more thing to waste our time with online! Still, while you get to grips with the new feature, which is essentially Snapchat for Insty (get the lowdown of how it works here) we realised something while we were messing around with it. Something we felt we should share. Basically, while Instagram videos didn't previously tell users who exactly had watched their clips (just as users can't tell who has viewed their profile or gone through their pics), Instagram Stories does let the user know who has taken a look. Curious as to who is watching your walking/skyline/dog vids? To find out just go onto your Story (you'll find yours in the top left of the home screen) then swipe up. There you'll see the number of people who have viewed your Story as well as each individual. Basically, it's another feature that Instagram have, er, borrowed from Snapchat, who traditionally allow users to see who is watching them. However, unlike Snapchat, you can actually go on to the profiles of people who you don't follow and, if they have a purple ring around their profile picture (i.e. they are using the Stories feature) you can watch their Story by clicking it. However, they will be notified that you have watched it. So what does this all mean? Well, you can see how popular the stuff you're posting is, and who is looking at it. But we just thought we might mention it in case you decided to go on to, I dunno, say, an ex's new partner's profile and take a look at their Story. They won't have seen you snooping through their pics before but they will be able to see that you're watching their Stories. Which more than likely will feature your old flame. Just a heads up.