As Stories usage continues to grow, you can expect brands to be looking for more ways to utilize the option to expand their reach and tap into the rising trend. And this new integration could become a key consideration for more businesses in 2019 - streaming giant Netflix has this week announced a new process which will enable users to share the latest TV show or movie they're watching in the app direct to their Instagram Story.
As explained by TechCrunch:
"The feature will add the title’s custom art to a users’ Instagram Story, where it'll remain visible for 24 hours. The Story can also be customized with other options, like a user poll, for example."
And as you can see in the second frame above, if the viewer has the Netflix app installed on their device, there'll also be a 'Watch on Netflix' link at the top left of the image, facilitating direct connection to the title.
The option could spark a lot of interest from other organizations - Facebook actually announced the Instagram Stories third-party integration process last May at its annual F8 conference, with Spotify, Musical.ly and GoPro among the initial small group of partners. But given the rising popularity of Netflix, and the more visual, and viral, nature of its offerings, this variation, in particular, could spark a lot more interest in the process, and get more brands thinking about how they might be able to add the same, with the direct link back to their own apps also providing a lure.
If this piques your interest, you can read the full documentation on how to enable Stories integration from your app on Facebook's developer blog. It's a fairly technical process (and the attribution link option is only available to approved developers), but it enables essentially the same functionality as Netflix is utilizing, while there's also an option to create similar for Facebook Stories too.
As noted, given the rising popularity of the Stories format, you can bet more businesses will be looking for options - and this new Netflix integration could spark a lot more interest.