With Playback, Instagram is joining the year-in-review trend by allowing you to relive your Stories from 2021. Instagram will provide each user with a curated Playback of ten Stories, but anyone may update, add, or remove Stories from their Playback list by going to their Stories archive, which will appear within Playback.
Users will get a message in their Instagram feed encouraging them to make a Playback, and if they encounter a 2021 Story they want to include in their Playback, they may click on the “2021” sticker to see and share it.
While Playback is likely to be popular, especially among power Instagram users who want to re-promote their favourite Stories, it’s odd that Instagram hasn’t embraced a simpler end-of-year feature that has previously proven popular: the “best nine” photo grid.
For numerous years, third-party applications have offered Instagram users variations of the top nine end-of-year photo grid, but typically at the cost of personal information like email addresses. Instagram offers built-in capabilities for users to create photo grids, but no year-in-review version has been released yet. Even Facebook, which is owned by the same firm as Instagram, has an automated look-back video feature (whether users want one or not).
Let’s be honest: most applications and platforms have yet to match Spotify’s Wrapped end-of-year feature, which allows users to browse and share their favourite songs, artists, and categories.
Playback will be available to all Instagram users on Thursday as a restricted feature for the next two weeks, according to the firm.