You Can Now Poll Your Followers in Instagram Stories

[MacRumors]

Instagram today introduced an interactive poll sticker in Instagram Stories that lets you ask a question and see real-time results from followers.

After you've taken a photo or video for your story, select the "poll" sticker and place it anywhere on the screen. Then, you can write a question and customize two answer options for followers to choose.

Once the poll has been shared, followers can immediately start voting and see the results. Once someone has voted, they'll see which choice is in the lead at any given moment. The story and poll both disappear after 24 hours as usual.

To see your own poll results, swipe up to open the viewers list for that part of your story. The menu that appears displays how many votes each option received, and you'll also see who voted and which option they chose.

Instagram Stories has also gained a new color picker for text and brushes, and an alignment tool for text and stickers.

On iOS, when you position text or a sticker on your photo or video, new blue lines will appear to help you center it or avoid placing it anywhere that might get covered up when someone watches your story.

Instagram version 17.0 is available now on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone.

Article Link: You Can Now Poll Your Followers in Instagram Stories

 

[mariusignorello]

These developers need to stop being lazy and post their release notes in the app’s metadata.

Maybe Apple should reject app updates that don’t provide useful information.

“Bug fixes” is ok for small updates but new features ought to be mentioned.

 

[ILikeAllOS]

Wow, one of the only times or possibly the only time I've seen Instagram actually do something new with their Stories instead of just copying Snapchat!

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Nice addition. Always good to have more ways to engage your audience.
[doublepost=1507048655][/doublepost]

These developers need to stop being lazy and post their release notes in the app’s metadata.

Maybe Apple should reject app updates that don’t provide useful information.

“Bug fixes” is ok for small updates but new features ought to be mentioned.

Remember that the vast majority never see the notes. Most iOS users have their phones set to automatically update their apps.

Is it worth the developers time to list those changes when only a single-digit percentage of users would possibly see them and of that small percentage only a small percentage would care or even understand those changes anyways.

Seems like a waste of time that almost no one cares about.
[doublepost=1507049034][/doublepost]

Wow, one of the only times or possibly the only time I've seen Instagram actually do something new with their Stories instead of just copying Snapchat!

Snapchat has copied Instagram too.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/8/13565030/snapchat-stories-rewind

Instagram is completely destroying Snapchat and the distance keeps growing. Instagram grew their stories in 5 months to the point it took Snapchat 5 years to reach and since then they've grown far more.

 

[iRock1]

These developers need to stop being lazy and post their release notes in the app’s metadata.

Maybe Apple should reject app updates that don’t provide useful information.

Hardly, specially when Apple does the same thing (see iTunes and its "UI improvements and bug fixes").

 

[yanki01]

These developers need to stop being lazy and post their release notes in the app’s metadata.

Maybe Apple should reject app updates that don’t provide useful information.

“Bug fixes” is ok for small updates but new features ought to be mentioned.

seems like apple lets them or doesn't care either. FB is the worst. updates every week but never says what's updated with the copy and paste notes from the previous.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

seems like apple lets them or doesn't care either. FB is the worst. updates every week but never says what's updated with the copy and paste notes from the previous.

This is because of the way Facebook (and many others) do their updates. When Facebook adds a new feature, they need to test it first. You can't just roll it out to over 2 billion active users and hope it works right. Instead they test it with a small subset of people. So they need to be able to roll out a new app version that supports the feature but they can't say "here's the new feature" because it's only available to a small number they activate remotely.

There's good reason Facebook and many others do weekly or bi-weekly updates like these.

 

[mariusignorello]

Hardly, specially when Apple does the same thing (see iTunes and its "UI improvements and bug fixes").

Well as I said, for minor bugs it’s ok. But major features need to be laid out, which Apple prominently does.
[doublepost=1507052479][/doublepost]Now getting people to actually answer the poll is another thing...

 

[yanki01]

This is because of the way Facebook (and many others) do their updates. When Facebook adds a new feature, they need to test it first. You can't just roll it out to over 2 billion active users and hope it works right. Instead they test it with a small subset of people. So they need to be able to roll out a new app version that supports the feature but they can't say "here's the new feature" because it's only available to a small number they activate remotely.

There's good reason Facebook and many others do weekly or bi-weekly updates like these.

understand that part though they also PUSH out updates with no app update which is annoying. happened at least 3 times in the last couple of months.

 

[tzm41]

This is because of the way Facebook (and many others) do their updates. When Facebook adds a new feature, they need to test it first. You can't just roll it out to over 2 billion active users and hope it works right. Instead they test it with a small subset of people. So they need to be able to roll out a new app version that supports the feature but they can't say "here's the new feature" because it's only available to a small number they activate remotely.

There's good reason Facebook and many others do weekly or bi-weekly updates like these.

This. Although I hate all those copy paste "Small fixes" changelog, this is just the nature of their A/B testing/rollout.