Yeah, it's a little weird and sounds like an engagement thing, but I can see why people would go crazy for it.
A few months ago, a master reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi share This image “Pals” is an Instagram sticker currently under development.
As you can see, the Pals sticker has the outline of a dog on it, which I assumed was some sort of pet-related feature so I didn't think much of it.
But over the weekend, Paluzzi shared some additional images of the feature, which isn't a photo-editing feature with an actual pet, but rather a Tamagotchi-like feature within Instagram.
As you can see above, this updated version of Pals stickers is actually a digital character that can be added to your Stories: the more people “like” a Story update containing the sticker, the bigger the virtual pet will become, and it may even include interactive elements (the text suggests that viewers can “play” with the digital character).
At the moment, it's not entirely clear how the feature will work: Will you be able to watch the pet you add grow, or will all users be able to see it? Will it be different for each user, in that each person viewing your story will see a different version of your character based on how they personally interacted with the update?
Either way, the concept is that you'll soon be able to add a virtual pet to your IG Stories, and that pet will change appearance over time depending on how many likes it gets.
As mentioned before, this feels like a pretty blatant engagement gimmick. But if it works…
And it's not hard to imagine it working: People strive for evolutions of Pokemon in Pokemon Go, and you can see how this would be appealing based on that logic alone, as Pokemon are just another set of digital pixels on a screen. It's also hugely popular, tapping into a similar obsession to Snapchat's message streaks that TikTok is now trying to emulate.
I would imagine that pets in stories would be just as appealing, and would be especially interesting to the younger audience that IG really wants to retain.
It's a little cheesy and feels a little bait-and-switch, but it could be a hit.
Instagram hasn't said anything about the Pals stickers yet.
