Instagram Story likes: Instagram will now allow users to send private Story likes, here’s how

Instagram is introducing a new feature that will allow users to interact with Stories. With the latest update, users can now send private likes to Stories, when someone uploads an image or a video.
Earlier, a user could only respond to a story with emojis or send a direct message. In both cases, the reply would end up in the personal message section of the user. This, in turn, would clutter the inbox of a user.
Once people get access to this feature, they will be able to see a ‘heart’ icon between the ‘airplane’ icon and the send message bar. If they decide to like a story posted by someone, it will be visible to them in their viewer sheet (where people see who has gone through their Stories).
To know who has liked your story, you will have to go through your viewer sheet, where you’ll find a heart icon beside the name of the person who has liked it. However, people who would publicly view your Stories, won’t be able to see the like count.
In a tweet, Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, said, “Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM. Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet.”
Mosseri added that the idea of the company is to “make sure that people can express more support for each other but also clean up the DMs at the same time.
“Messaging is a key priority for us, and a big piece of that is focusing on DMs,” added the Instagram head.