Instagram to do away with ‘Swipe Up’ call to action from Stories on August 30: Check out why

Instagram: Photo-sharing platform Instagram has decided to do away with the much coveted swipe up link from its Stories. That’s right! Starting August 30 this year, the ‘Swipe Up’ links on Instagram Stories would no longer be available. The feature has been highly useful for businesses and high profile creators to easily redirect followers to the links that would let them learn more about a product, read an article or see a video, and such. However, this would not mean that there would be no possibility for adding hyperlinks to the stories.

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Instagram is instead bringing a new Link Sticker instead of the ‘Swipe Up’ call to action, and this feature would be available to all of the users who could use the call to action. The platform has been testing this feature among a small user group since June, but from the coming Monday, the Link Sticker would be available more broadly.

The announcement was first noticed by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who warned creators of the impending change.

Instagram has said that it would begin to replace the “Swipe Up” feature with the Link Sticker for those who currently have access to the call to action starting August 30. The feature is accessible to businesses and creators who are either verified or have crossed the follower count threshold, which has not been officially announced by Instagram, but is widely reported to be at least 10,000.

The Link Sticker is said to have advantages over the “Swipe Up” link, like allowing creators to choose between different styles, resize the sticker and place it anywhere on the story as per their desire. Moreover, currently, in stories where the “Swipe Up” call to action is used, followers are not able to react or reply, but with the Link Stickers, followers would be able to react and reply (if enabled by the creator) to stories in which the Link Stickers are used.

As of now, there is no change in the criteria for users who would have access to this feature, but Instagram is mulling whether it should change the criteria to make it available to a wider user base or not.