Instagram is testing a new way of interacting with post replies while also experimenting with an interactive star-sign-based sticker, all aimed at engendering greater engagement.

First off, after experimenting with the feature in the past few months, Instagram is now live testing the capacity to share comments from any public post or Reel to your IG story.

The feature, thus, allows the individuals who tested it to share comments in stories. He did this by applying a new option to swipe left on comments, and this would display the comment in a new sticker type that was placed anywhere in the story frame.

It's pretty much the same as TikTok's video comment replies option, which it added back in 2020, while YouTube also has Shorts comment replies, which it expanded to all public comments (in addition to comments on your own clips) back in June.
The idea is that this will provide more prompts for your short clips, by providing the capacity to highlight interesting comments within new videos.

And it’s clearly driving engagement on other apps, so it makes sense for IG to also jump on board, and align with usage trends.

On another front, Instagram’s also looking to get into horoscopes, with a new test of an astrology sticker in the app. which, when added to your story or Reel, would include a symbol and star sign title to highlight your birth alignment in-stream.

Using the sticker will then also encourage further engagement possibilities, via a star-sign matching feature, which will allow users to check their relative compatibility with you via the sticker you use.
It's a pretty minor feature, and as such, it's kind of surprising to see just how integral-looking IG appears to be testing it within the sticker tray. Then again, research also suggests that star signs have been experiencing something of a resurgence among younger audiences of late.

It may, therefore, be an effective and creative method to achieve further interest, as it will encourage the users to check how their shared stars align through these listings.

From a marketing point of view, comment reply might be a good way to highlight any positive mentions, provide your engaged fans with a spotlight, while it also will give you much more chance to display the mentions of your products on other posts which can help you glean much more promotional value from such.
That star sign feature is probably not as useful, but maybe, if that fits your audience, you could use it to show the star sign for the month and share brand or product insights related to that sign's key traits.

Yeah, comment sticker definitely has more direct potential here, but worth considering both either way.

The new comment reply feature is in live testing from today onwards, while the star sign sticker is still in internal testing with no official release date as yet.