Stories feature was first introduced by Snapchat. Soon after, it was copied by Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and more. Now, Google is adding Web Stories feature to its Discover feed. For the unaware, Discover is the feed of articles consisting of a range of topics from across the web. It usually appears when you swipe right from your Android home screen or when you open your Google app on Android and iOS and swipe below.
Google says Web Stories bring a “visual and immersive” experience to Discover. The Stories carousel is now available in India, the United States, and Brazil. It is said to help you “find some of the best visual content from around the web.” In India, Web Stories will be available in English and Hindi. Google expects to expand it to more languages, countries, and Google surfaces.
To browse Web Stories in Discover you need to open the feed, and you’ll be greeted by the new feature. You can tap to move forward to the next page, or swipe to an entirely different Story in the carousel. You can also enter full-screen to make it more immersive.
For creators and publishers, there is no additional revenue share for Story ads and Story authors are in full control of hosting, sharing and adding links to those Stories. These stories are just an extension of a website.
Web Stories in Discover can be created by anyone, whether you are an individual creator or a publisher. The company claims more than 2,000 websites have already published Stories that have been indexed by Google.