Stories are about to invade your Facebook News Feed in a major way

Facebook Stories may not be all that popular, but the company isn't letting that stop it from finding new ways to force users to interact with them.

Today, Facebook is introducing a set of new features for all its version of Stories, including one that will allow the ephemeral videos to be tied to specific pages, events, and Groups. The update will also put Stories from Instagram and Messenger at the top of News Feeds.

Besides being a blow to everyone who hates seeing Facebook Stories in their News Feeds, the move could be particularly devastating to Snap Inc., which has already been suffering since Facebook-owned Instagram introduced the Stories feture to its app.

This latest change could further exacerbate those issues since now every Facebook user, including those who use Facebook Lite, will likely see more Stories on the social network. Now, not only will celebs and brands be able to create Stories via pages, but groups and events will also be able to create Stories as well.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Additionally, the Stories people are already posting to Instagram and Messenger will now appear at the top of News Feeds. Facebook has been testing cross-posting between Instagram and Facebook for some time, but making the move official will exponentially increase the amount of Stories being shared to Facebook overnight. (Instagram counts more than 250 million daily active users.)

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the update was meant to make Stories easier to share,

“People are still using the Stories format, and people want an easier way to share Stories across platforms. We're introducing a new experience simply called Stories, which will connect Facebook Stories and Messenger Day. Most people's experiences on Facebook are determined by the groups they join, the events they attend, and the pages they follow. So additionally, we are introducing Stories to these surfaces."

Facebook is also introducing new ways to control who see your Stories, since they will now be viewable to a lot more people.

• A public setting, which allows Facebook followers, friends, and anyone you've messaged in Messenger to see your Story.

• A friends and connections setting, which limits Stories to friends and people you've chatted with in Messenger (even if you've messaged someone who you're not friends with).

• A friends only setting, which limits Stories to Facebook friends only.

• Custom and hide settings, which lets you specify the people you want to be able to see your Story or those who you want to hide it from.

While the new privacy settings will be a welcome feature for many, it underscores the fact that pulling Instagram Stories into Facebook's News feed could be problematic for many who have very different sets of friends and followers on both platforms. (You can still choose not to cross-post, though.)

Facebook is also adding the ability for groups and events to create Stories that most closely mirrors Snapchat's popular "Our Stories" feature.

Beginning this week, people who attend or are "interested in" attending events organized via Facebook can create collaborative Stories. Those Stories will only be viewable to people associated with the event, and those Stories will last for 24 hours. Likewise, individual groups will soon be able to allow members to create and share Stories for their group.

This huge new Stories push could further hurt Snapchat, which has increasingly been positioning "Our Stories" and its Snap Maps feature as the way for people to find out about what's going on in any given place. Facebook isn't opening these Stories up to the general public, at least for now, but it shows hat, yet again, the social network is more than willing to aggressively copy Snapchat's signature and most popular features.