What is Twitter Super Follow?

Twitter recently announced a feature called ‘Super Follow’, which allows users with a certain number of followers to offer exclusive paid content, similar to YouTube’s membership feature. Instagram is currently working on a similar tool that will allow creators to offer exclusive stories to followers.

In fact, the Instagram team apparently isn’t too bothered about what the tool will be called for now, as TechCrunch reports, just calling it ‘Exclusive Stories’. Developer Alessandro Palozzi first shared a screenshot of the feature on Twitter, and then Instagram officially confirmed that the feature is indeed in the works.

#Instagram is working on stories for fan clubs, exclusive stories visible only to fan club members 👀

ℹ️ It is not possible to take screenshots of exclusive stories. pic.twitter.com/GAYvRFVBss

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) June 21, 2021

Benefits of Instagram Exclusive stories

For brands, all Instagram currently offers through its storytelling feature is the ability to host products that users can tap directly to make purchases, so “exclusive stories” become a key branding feature for brands.
The screenshot shared by Paluzzi shows that when regular users get caught up in an “exclusive story”, Instagram tells them that “friends only” can watch the content. “Exclusive Stories” will also be marked with a purple heart symbol that will work in exactly the same way that ‘close friends’ stories are currently tagged with a green star symbol.

#Instagram continues to work on the exclusive stories for Fan clubs 👀

ℹ️ The Exclusive Stories icon will be purple. pic.twitter.com/4Qzzdodeqf

— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) June 24, 2021

It also looks like Instagram will block people from trying to take screenshots of what they saw and share it with people who are not friends. The social media platform owned by Facebook will also encourage creators to keep their exclusive stories in the highlights so that new members will have something to look forward to in a subscription.

Although the screenshots do not reveal much about pricing or how Instagram plans to implement the paid part in this particular feature, the subscription fee may be the way to go. The pay-per-view metric seems too complicated for users.