The Future of Stories Format: From Invention to Standard

The Future of Stories Format: From Invention to Standard
The present scenario of this tech-savvy world clearly mirrors the dire need of Stories format to increase user attention span and magnify the value of sharing content online!
Swarali Jambhale
Last Updated: Sep 4, 2020
We are at the brink of visual communication of the era! Studies show that, WhatsApp Stories have over 450 million users, Instagram leads with 500 million users and Facebook Stories - 150 million. Lastly, Snapchat as a whole just reached 191 million. With more than 1200 million users, Stories distinctly is the format of the future!
The Stories format conceptualized by Snapchat and adulated by Instagram, is the native genre of glass rectangles! People have now started filtering their lives through the window of a smartphone as they prefer sharing content with a feeling of empathy and a human element to it. Stories are just point-and-shoot. So, hold up your phone - shoot a picture - share, and there you get instant eye-catching content. This is all what Stories are! And you don’t need to premediate!
How Is Facebook Twirling Towards ‘Stories’
Stories
In 2012, when Snapchat was in spotlight, Facebook heedfully took a note and realized that ‘Stories’ was the trick-of-the-trade that could give it the breathing space in business and prompt execution would give its business a roaring trade! As Stories do not demand a ton of thoughts to creation, Facebook estimates that across social media apps, getting ‘shares’ to Stories will outperform sharing through feeds sometime in coming years.
‘Stories’ Was Instagram’s Smartest Move
Stories
Instagram Stories are now being used by more than 500 million users! With the credibility of inception given to Snapchat, Instagram has sprouted the idea of Stories from its very own competition. It has created a Stories carousel ad that lets businesses share a slideshow of three photos or videos to string together a narrative, making Stories the most ascendant way for people to share visual content online.
Google’s Take on Stories: Web Stories
AMP Stories
Inheriting the DNA of Storytelling like Instagram and Snapchat do, Google introduced Web Stories earlier known as AMP Stories, stand-alone compilations of AMP and HTML layers of elements like multimedia, text and more, that proffer the publishers with rich storytelling options designed for mobile web. Google’s AMP Team has now announced updates to Web Stories that will include monetization capabilities!
What Does Storytelling Have to Do With Your Business?
Focus on Business
Business
The market of Stories now accounts to double-digit revenue growth in the business world. Every couple of years, a new platform makes up to a certain degree of popularity to which the business people or marketers have to adopt. In order to coerce your audience about your products, a business person has to be a fine storyteller!
Focus on Marketing
Marketing
The easily comprehensible story format plays a crucial role in increasing the average time-on-site and ranking of your website as search engines focus on the user engagement metrics while ranking the pages. As AMP pages are shown up on the Google News carousel, they are given prominent priority to be placed in mobile search. So, incorporating Web Stories format helps a great deal in increasing the user’s time-on-site thereby reducing the bounce rate.
Over To You
Interpreting human interactions on social media is the matter at hand and the mobile-first, people-first and video-first Stories format is the sword to cut this Gordian Knot! To augment the concept of Stories, Visual Stories is making a pitch at Web Stories with its Web Story Builder. So, create artistic visual stories and let your creativity take the center stage!