While social platforms continue to drift away from the "social" elements and more towards entertainment, the platforms also know that engagement still remains key to making their apps as sticky as possible for users.

Which is why Instagram continues to develop new ways to double-down on elements where it's still seeing strong user activity, be it in DMs, Reels, or Stories.

Which is where this latest experiment comes in.
Instagram is currently testing a new "Lately" feature for Stories, which brings a new, automatically generated highlight feed to your profile that showcases your most recent Stories activity.

In simple terms, the "Lately" Story extends the life of your Stories beyond 24 hours, providing profile visitors with more context as to the type of content that you post to your Stories feed.

Which may be telling, since, as mentioned, even though general feed activity on IG is trending downward, with users posting less and less to their main profile than they have in the past, Stories engagement is stronger, as IG users look to engage in less permanent, public ways.

That's actually been the case for the past few years, with IG chief Adam Mosseri noting back in 2022 that:

But friends post way more to stories and send way more DMs than they post to Feed.

Also, noted on the connection front is DM engagement, with addition of Notes, Channels, and other close friend connection options as Instagram hopes to maintain a level of deeper connection even as it re-aligns itself around video content.

Indeed, Meta recently reported that 50% of what people now view in their IG feeds is being driven there by AI recommendations, and the system is really focused on trying to get people to promote Reels, which has been the most sticky type of content option for the service.

That keeps the users coming back, again, but without the connective personal elements, and again, Meta's other apps lack differentiation, still, with its social graph remaining a key strength.

Therefore, there is a need to continuously test out refinements and improvements to maintain that thread, and keep the users connected, while entertaining them.