First, Instagram is experimenting with a new Stories option called ‘Fan Club’ Storiesthat would allow users to post exclusive Stories content that can only be viewed by members of a fan club or approved group.

As you can see in this example shared by an app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Fan club stories would only be visible to group members, while users would not be able to take screenshots of these exclusive stories posts.

This would add another option to the current Instagram Stories options. Now you can set your entire profile to “private”‘so only your followers can see your stories, or you can ‘Close friends’ list for more intimate story sharing as opposed to public sharing. This new option would add another category in line with Instagram’s broader drive to add more tools for YouTubers to monetize their efforts on the platform, with paying members likely to be added to the fan club list where they would then share exclusive content can ,

We don’t have much to do at this point, but if we continue Paluzzi’s previous discoveries, we’ll likely get more information from Instagram in the next month or so.

In addition, Paluzzi also has a new ‘Collectibles‘Options when testing.

Instagram collectibles

As mentioned earlier, the option seems to encroach on the current NFT craze and would apparently allow Instagram users to bid on digital items on the stream.


Again, we don’t have much to do here at this point, so it’s mostly speculation, but it seems like a new way to encourage digital art purchases by providing a way to get it featured on Instagram, with that Collectibles tag added to stories when shared.

This could spark new engagement and buying behavior in the app and help digital creators make more money from their work by being able to present such auctions to the billions of Instagram users.

It makes perfect sense in this regard, and as the platform seeks to encourage more buying behavior on the app, this can be another way to get people to spend money and share digital artwork on the stream.

We asked Instagram for more information on both options and will update this post if we hear anything.