Friday, Instagram announced a new update to its Stories feature allowing users to create their own “Add Yours” templates.
Add Yours lets users add GIFs, text, and gallery images to Story templates, Instagram says. From there, others can add to the template as well. The idea, the social media company says in a release, is to make it easier for accounts to take a prompt, meme, or trend and make it their own.
“Add Yours story templates gives people more ways to express their creativity in Stories and share what’s on their mind with their followers,” Instagram says.
To create an Add Yours template, users can navigate to open a new Story, add the details they want, then select “Add Yours Templates,” which is in the Sticker Tray. Here, creators can select with elements specifically to add to the template, which is useful if you want to add more details for a specific story without necessarily making it part of the template. After sharing the Story, others can use the template for their Stories.
In that case, when users see a Story made by another creator with the “Add Yours Template” sticker, they can tap “Add Yours,” which will take them to the Camera. From there, the template elements (those items the template maker selects for inclusion), and edit their Story as they please from there. It’s also possible to see others who have used the template.
According to Instagram, there are a few templates already available, including ones from a cappella group Pentatonix and the UFC.
The move makes sense, especially as video and audio memes have proliferated in the last few years. Templates on TikTok and CapCut have become extremely popular. Additionally, it’s already possible to add “Effects” to Instagram Stories, which add visual animations.
There’s no word on whether Instagram will ever add a similar feature to Reels, its short video format, which is similar to TikTok. Still, it’s easy to see the application translating to that format as well, possibly with an even better use case.
Add Yours templates are available to Instagram users now.
Image credits: Instagram