Here’s How Many Times You Can Answer Someone’s Instagram Story Question Sticker

On Jul. 10, Instagram debuted a new stick feature for Stories called the question sticker. Since then, it's literally taken over our Story feeds and become everyone's new favorite obsession. If you're not familiar, the feature allows us to request question submissions from our followers, a la "I'm waiting for my face mask to dry, ask me anything about skincare." It's a great tool for getting to know the people you're connected with, and a great prompt for getting the conversation going. None of us can get enough of it. If you've already been playing with it, you might be curious about how many times you can answer someone's question sticker on Instagram — because, really, it's not that obvious. And because the feature is so new, we're still all a bit nervous about using it the wrong way or doing anything that might be accidentally embarrassing. While the questions are anonymous when they're posted, the original user can privately see who submitted each response. I imagine people are curious about this because they're more likely to submit a variety of answers when they know it won't be directly linked to them, publicly. The good news is: if you're interacting with an account that's posted a question sticker, you can submit as many questions as you want to that sticker. There's no limit to how many times you can submit, though it is up to the original user to decide which questions they respond to.

If you've got tons of great questions you should feel free to submit them all, knowing that there's no limit and no reason to take the conversation into the direct message space, if you don't want to. That said, if you do want to talk to the poster outside of the context of the Story, you can easily DM them, as their response to you will show up in your message center anyway.

This might be a bit easier to understand in context. Let's say someone that you follow posts a question sticker asking for recommendations for the best places to get brunch in your city. If you're all about that brunch life and have a list that you've been keeping for this very type of opportunity, you're going to want to answer the question more than once. But if the person who posted the question isn't a close friend or even someone you know offline, you might feel a little weird sending them a DM with a more detailed response.

Luckily, there's absolutely no limit to how many times you can answer a question through Stories for this very reason. You can keep responding to the original sticker with as many brunch suggestions as you please. If the poster decides that they want to talk to you more directly — which they totally might, they can always DM you and start the conversation themselves. So there's always the option to take the conversation off Stories, but you don't ever have to if that's not what you're interested in. The way the feature is set up allows you to be shy if you want to be, while still participating and interacting.

After the epic success of Instagram polls and emoji sliders, it's no surprise that the question sticker is a big hit. The common thread here is that we all like to interact with each other, especially when we know that our interactions will be private. That tiny bit of privacy gives us the confidence to connect to people that we might never have before. And that tiny bit of transparency, in which the user can see who submitted the response, makes a safe place where we don't ever have to worry about trolling. Personally, I can't wait for the question sticker to become ever more widely spread. I look forward to seeing how it bridges the gap between not only potential friends on the app, but also brands, influencers, artists and community leaders.