This may not seem like a massive addition, but given that WhatsApp Status is now up to 450 million daily active users, and that WhatsApp is seeing significant growth in Western markets, it could be a handy expansion for your content.
As per this screenshot from app researcher Alessando Paluzzi, you may soon be able to cross-post your IG Stories direct to WhatsApp.
You can, of course, already cross-post your Instagram Stories to Facebook, expanding your potential audience reach, with the addition of WhatsApp, presumably direct to WhatsApp Status (its Stories equivalent) adding even more ways to easily reach more people with your content.
I mean, it may not be ideal, as there are sometimes formatting variations and elements that don’t directly translate. Interactive stickers, for example, may not have the same functionality on WhatsApp, and may not work.
But still, adding the opportunity to reach a wider audience, with the same amount of content, could be appealing, and could help to link you through to more interested people.
Particularly if you’re able to re-share your Stories to WhatsApp Channels, its one-to-many broadcasting option, based on topical interests.
If your brand, for example, created a WhatsApp channel where you share your latest product updates, having the capacity to easily re-share your Stories to that Channel could be a big benefit.
Meta recently reported that WhatsApp Channels is now up to 500 million users, and the combination of topically-aligned update streams, and more visual Stories content, could be valuable.
It’s nothing as yet, as this is only an element of back-end code, Meta itself hasn’t reported this as a functional update.
But if it does go ahead, and WhatsApp does get an expanded integration on the Stories front, that could be very interesting.