What you need to know
- Telegram officially teases its upcoming Stories feature.
- The feature has new options like setting expiration times ranging from six to 48 hours.
- The feature is currently in the testing phase and intends to launch in early July.
Telegram is one of the leading messaging apps, and while it has a ton of features, it's a little late to the party when it comes to one highly requested feature. However, the app is finally giving in and will soon allow users to share Instagram-like Stories.
The announcement came from CEO Pavel Durov himself through his official Telegram channel. Durov says the "Stories" have been the most requested features from the messaging platform users for many years. They were against adding Stories since the feature was everywhere, but Telegram decided to oblige since it made up more than half of its feature requests.
The video shared by Durov on the same channel shows us what to expect from the Stories feature. It looks like the traditional Stories format we have seen in other social media apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. It includes sharing videos, captions, emojis, photos, and more.
However, the Stories feature placement on Telegram appears somewhat unique from other messaging apps. They're squeezed at the very top, right above conversations in the "Chats" tab. The stories expand when the user pulls down from the chat list.
Stories on Telegram will be privacy-centric, as seen in WhatsApp. Users can share their stories with all their contacts or have exceptions to hide them. The messaging service also allows hiding stories posted by any contact from the main screen with a new "Hidden" list feature.
While users can put Stories by capturing photos from either of the cameras, the platform also gives precise photo and editing tools to enhance them and further add captions and links, or they can even tag other people, as we see in Instagram Stories.
The other highlight feature of Telegram Stories includes the ability to set expiration times between six and 48 hours. Additionally, users can save those stories to their profile pages to make them more interactive.
The feature is currently in the last testing phase in Telegram, and it will be available for the public starting in early July, notes Durov.
