A hand holds an iPhone in a wooded area with the Instagram app open on the screen

Almost nobody was using Facebook's story feature, so now Facebook is attempting to salvage the situation by allowing users to post their Instagram story to both social media apps at the same time.

In 2016, Facebook-owned Instagram added the "Stories" feature - a nearly identical clone of Snapchat's feature of the same name. While it was seen as a bit of a desperate act at the time, people still began flocking to Insta to try it out, and - surprise! - ended up loving it. So much so, in fact, that by springtime 2017, Instagram had added almost as many daily active users to their ranks as Snapchat had in the whole of 2016. In addition, social analytics company Delmodo said in June that engagement with Snapchat stories had declined 50% compared to June of last year.

After that success, Facebook began very pointedly injecting the Stories feature into all of its apps - Facebook in January, WhatsApp in February and Facebook Messenger in March. While WhatsApp didn't fare too badly with approximately 175 million daily users, nobody seemed to be using the Stories feature in the Facebook app. And I mean nobody.

Enter Instagram's new test feature: double-posting. After creating a story in Instagram, some users are now seeing the option to post it directly to Facebook. If they choose to do so, the stories appear as a story created within the Facebook app would, with nothing but a little label that says "Instagram" to mark the difference.

Because the feature is still in testing, we can't know for sure whether or not it will actually stick. However, if it does turn out that this helps encourage the use of Facebook Stories, it's doubtful that the company will let it go.

Thoughts?

Do you think the double-post feature will boost the popularity of Facebook stories? Will you try it, or are you a die-hard Instagram devotee who prefers to keep your content separate? Let us know in the comments!