Designing People’s Instagram Stories Is Now A Million-Dollar Business

Every day, 400 million people open up Instagram and flip through Stories, the app’s short, ephemeral photo and video updates from people they follow. Since its launch in 2016, Stories has become a popular way for people to share more about their lives–and more often. But with that immediacy has come a pressure to seem cool and spontaneous all the time. It’s also a challenge for brands that use Stories to advertise; companies need to produce fun, current content on a daily basis, and manage those Stories the same way they manage their permanent content elsewhere online–even if it quickly disappears. That’s where Unfold, an app specifically for Instagram Story templates, is poised to help. Founded in March 2017 by Alfonso Cobo–an architect by training–Unfold began as an app for designers to create portfolios via iPad, before Cobo realized that Instagram Stories were catching on. At the time, “Instagram Stories was really limited in terms of tools and how we could showcase our work in this platform,” Cobo says. “I saw there was a huge potential in Stories.” Read more at Fast Company.