Instagram Stories Creation Growth: Diagnose Why Users Don't Post and Design Incentives

You are a product manager at Instagram, and the goal is to get people sharing more Stories, the photo and video posts that disappear after 24 hours. How would you encourage users to post stories more? ```hint Why people hold back Someone who does not post may not know how, may find it too much effort, may feel self-conscious about who is watching, or may have posted before and heard nothing back. Each cause calls for a different fix. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the target more people posting at least once (breadth), or existing posters posting more often (frequency)? - Which posters matter most here: everyday users sharing with friends, or creators and businesses posting to an audience? - Has story posting declined recently, or is this a growth push from a stable baseline? - Is it acceptable if new stories come partly at the expense of feed posts or Reels? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear goal (breadth versus frequency) and a segmentation of potential posters, with a chosen focus. - A diagnosis of why people do not post, checked against data, before any incentive is proposed. - Incentives that reduce friction and raise motivation, including the viewer side, since replies and reactions are what reward a poster. - Prioritization and an experiment plan that accounts for effects on viewers. - Posting metrics paired with guardrails on viewer experience, content quality and cannibalization of other formats. ### Follow-up Questions - A reminder notification lifts posting, but viewers start skipping more stories. How do you decide whether to keep it? - How would you tell whether new stories are incremental or simply moved over from feed posts? - Which incentive would you deliberately avoid, and why?