VK stories are a relatively new way to attract attention to yourself or the company you are promoting. If the function appeared on Instagram and Snapchat a long time ago, absolutely everyone uses it and considers it an integral part of the application, on VKontakte it is only gaining popularity. Despite this, out of 95 million users, 40 million on average used “disappearing” photos and videos per month.
This material is more suitable for beginners to study. To get serious about working on the most popular social network, create a group on VK , make a beautiful design , connect widgets for communities , write a welcome/ selling post and begin the full promotion of your VKontakte group .
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What are Stories on VKontakte?
Stories are disappearing posts with snapshots and short videos that can be shared without being posted to your personal page. They are displayed in the “Stories” block for 24 hours - after that they disappear. The section is located above the news feed.
This is how Stories are displayed in the news feed from a computer
This type of publication can be used by ordinary users and communities. The first ones are for sharing bright moments from life with friends, the second ones are for promoting the group or informing subscribers.
You can upload videos up to 12 seconds long. There are stickers, graffiti or text - they will complement the Story. For example, briefly describe what happens in the video or where the photo was taken.
Groups/publics have different limits - maximum video length is 15 seconds.
Stories have a counter - view statistics. This shows users who have watched Stories. Publications can be shared in dialogues - for example, send a photo or video to a friend in private messages (DM).
To find out who watched Stories, open the post and click on the eye icon in the lower left corner. The analytics section will open.
What happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste?
When the Mary Celeste left the port of New York on November 7, 1872, it was the last time its passengers and crew were seen.
Under the command of Captain Benjamin S. Briggs, the Mary Celeste had seven crew members on board, as well as Briggs' wife and daughter, as the ship headed for Genoa, Italy. However, on December 5, the British ship Dei Grazia encountered the Mary Celeste. It was unmanned and off course, but undamaged and full of supplies.
Originally named Amazon in 1861, the ship endured several troubled voyages during her time at sea, eventually receiving her final name under the ownership of Richard W. Haynes in 1868. It was still seaworthy when it was discovered off the coast of the Azores, Portugal.
After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a theoretical account of the fate of the Mary Celeste in 1884, interest in the ship was revived. Scientists, writers and the media have revisited the story of the Mary Celeste using transcriptions from the ship's log (the log itself was lost around 1885), notes from an official request and information from the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmospheric Data Set.
In 2002, documentarian Anne MacGregor and Phil Richardson, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, suggested that the Mary Celeste was abandoned the day after its last log entry—November 25, 1872—perhaps because that the ship was taking on water and Briggs spotted land.
Another theory was put forward by Dr Andrea Sella of University College London in 2006, suggesting that an explosion on board forced Briggs to abandon ship.
How to view History in VK?
Stories on VK are published by communities and friends. They are located in the news feed - in the section above the main content. In the web version of VKontakte, these are rectangular blocks with a cover. Here you can see who published the Story: the name of a friend or the name of a group/public.
To view Stories, click on the cover.
Open the Story of a friend or group
The post will open in full screen mode: a short video or several images with text, graffiti and stickers. Communities can insert links.
Example: History of the group “ppc.world” - there is a “Read” button at the bottom. If you click on the button, the article will open.
Button with link to article
When one Story ends, another one will automatically open, but from a different user.
In the VK mobile application, Stories are also in the news feed. But unlike the PC version, these are circles with the avatar of a group or friend. To see what a user has posted, click on the icon.
Opening Stories through the mobile app
New Stories—posts you haven't looked at—are circled in blue. Viewed photos and videos are grayed out.
Not all publications are equally interesting. In order not to lose materials from friends and relatives among dozens of disappearing photos and videos from online stores and thematic public pages, you can hide unnecessary Stories.
How to hide Stories in VK - step-by-step algorithm:
- Open the publication through the news feed.
- Click on the icon with three dots - it is located at the bottom of the playback block.
- Select the "Hide from Stories" option.
Hiding posts from the feed
Anonymous browsing
VKontakte takes into account all views of Stories - the author of the publication knows who opened the material. Here, too, parallels can be drawn with Instagram.
Peculiarities
You can comment on stories of friends or groups. If you press the left mouse button on the window that opens, the video playback will stop, this is indicated by the stopped bar at the top. When you type a comment, the same thing happens.
Either way, this new messaging format quickly became popular. Stories are already regularly published in official groups of serious commercial companies and government agencies. And ordinary users came up with the game “story relay race”. But it needs to be discussed in a separate article.
How to add a Story on VKontakte?
Let's move on to practice: we will publish the first Story on VK - from a personal profile and on behalf of the community. First from a computer, then from a phone.
From computer
How to publish a Story on VKontakte from a computer - step-by-step algorithm:
- Open the "News" section.
- In the “Stories” section, click on the plus icon - in the first block where your avatar is used as the cover.
- An editor will open: add text, select a font (one of six available options), set the text color.
- At the bottom of the section there is a palette icon - here you can change the background color or add an emoticon to a photo/short video.
- Nearby there is a button with a camera icon - through this function you can add a photo or upload a video - no more than 12 seconds.
- To add a sticker, go to the appropriate section - emoticon icon in the editor.
- There is a Brush tool. Select line thickness, intensity and color. Start drawing.
When you finish creating Stories, click the “Publish” button.
Now let's publish the Story on behalf of the community:
- Join a group or public page.
- Under the main menu there is a block with the “Add story” button - click on it.
- Select a photo or video from your computer. You can upload a beautiful picture for the background. The duration of the video is no more than 15 seconds, the file size is no more than 10 MB. The recommended image aspect ratio is 9x16.
- The editor will open - publish your Story or add new elements.
- You can publish a story: to do this, indicate the title and upload the cover.
A plot is a collection of Stories with a common cover and title. The group administrator can combine up to 20 media files into one story: photos and videos.
From phone
Now let’s post the Story from your phone - through the VK application on Android and iOS:
- Open the “News” section and click on your avatar in the Story block.
- Select the publication type: Story or Video Story. To record video and take pictures, a smartphone camera is used - front and main.
- You can add a mask - click on the mask icon on the toolbar.
- There is a separate section with settings. Here you can specify who can see photos and videos—for example, only friends. In this case, you will hide publications from VKontakte users who are not on your friends list.
- To shoot a video, you need to press and hold the red button in the center. The duration of the video is no more than 12 seconds.
- To post a photo or video, click on the white arrow in the upper right corner.
How to make a Story on behalf of the community - instructions:
- Log in to your group or public page.
- Near the line for creating a new post there is a Stories icon - click on it.
- The editor will open - record a video, take a photo, apply the desired effects or add a thematic caption. Publish the material.
Interesting fact: unlike Instagram, in VK you cannot tag a person in History - for example, leave an active link to the profile of another social network user.
Did the destruction of the Library of Alexandria really set civilization back?
As part of the museum in the city of the same name of Alexander the Great (323 BC), there was the Library of Alexandria. There may have been more than one actual library institution founded by Ptolemy I Soter (282 BC) at the urging of the scholar Demetrius of Phalerum.
Demetrius designed the library to accommodate intellectuals with thousands of texts, with laboratories, lecture areas and similar spaces. At its peak, the Library of Alexandria must have housed thousands, if not millions, of works by authors from all over the Mediterranean. Buddhist religious texts and Hebrew scriptures were accompanied by the philosophical writings of Aristotle. All of them were carefully collected, copied and translated by the library's staff scientists.
What exactly happened to the library still remains a mystery. When Julius Caesar stormed the harbor at Alexandria in 48 BC, he set it on fire. The fire, which quickly spread throughout the city, also destroyed the library.
In another story, the library escaped a severe fire, but the documents, stored in a warehouse near the port, were destroyed as early as 20 BC.
By the fourth century AD, the remaining library premises in Alexandria were targeted by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I (395) to eradicate paganism in the empire.
With the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab was accused of destroying any works that contradicted the Koran. We may never know this secret of history.
Regardless of when the contents of the Library of Alexandria ceased to exist, many scholars believe that the loss of knowledge was a huge setback for civilization. With 700,000 scrolls containing scientific, legal, historical and other forms of information across disciplines, this could be compared to "losing access to the Internet and all its content," writes Aria Nouri for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Adding links
You can add a link to History - for example, to an article in a group or public page. To do this, select the desired post and click the repost button. A list of actions will open - select the “Add to history” function.
The material will be attached to the publication. Add a call to action in the editor - for example, write the text: “New article about marketing. Read the link."
In a similar way, you can publish a link to an article through the web version of VKontakte.
Important: Stories cannot contain links to third-party resources - only to materials stored on the social network.
Where is the amber room?
Built in the 18th century, the Amber Room, called the "Eighth Wonder of the World", was an elaborate room in the Berlin City Palace. The room's amber and gold panels, originally intended to be installed at Charlottenburg Palace for King Frederick of Prussia, were designed by Andreas Schlüter and built by Danish craftsmen.
The richly decorated panels were presented to Peter the Great in 1716 and later installed in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg, Russia in 1755.
Years of renovations resulted in more gold, amber and gemstones being woven into the panels, raising the room's total cost to approximately $142 million (in today's currency).
However, with the outbreak of World War II, the Amber Room - among other Russian treasures - was looted by Nazi troops. The panels were sent to Königsberg, Germany, and installed in the castle museum until 1943. The panels were then packed away for storage, but they are rumored to have disappeared when the castle museum was bombed in 1944.
The location of the Amber Room panels remains unknown, but there are many theories about their fate. Some historians believe they were destroyed in 1944, while others believe they were loaded onto a ship and sent into the Baltic Sea. And perhaps the ship with its valuable cargo sank.
Joseph Stalin and the KGB were accused of involvement in the fate of the Amber Room. For the so-called curse associated with the Amber Room was exacerbated by the deaths of two individuals involved in the search, George Stein and Yuri Gusev, in 1987 and 1992, respectively.
The Soviet government built a replica of the Amber Room in 1979, a joint project of German and Russian craftsmen. Construction of the new Amber Room was completed in 2003.
Stories as a promotion tool
Stories can be used to promote various projects on VKontakte - from a thematic public page to a local business.
Let's take a closer look at how you can use disappearing photos and videos:
- Personal brand promotion. Publish small notes in Stories that confirm your expertise in your field. As an example: customer reviews. Share moments from your life to build trust with your audience.
- Storytelling. Create stories and tell stories through them: for example, 10 photos and 10 short videos of how you went hiking or developed the concept of a new product.
- Sale of goods. Make short videos about products with a call to action - for example, a discount for the New Year: hurry up to buy new skis.
- Informing subscribers. Inform customers about promotions and discounts, tell them about the release of new products.
Who was Jack the Ripper?
Jack the Ripper killed several women in London in 1888, but his identity remains a mystery.
Also known as the "Butcher of Whitechapel", Jack the Ripper not only took the lives of five prostitutes, but also mutilated their bodies using a technique that involved anatomical knowledge and a complete hatred of women.
His first target, Mary Ann Nicholls, was killed on August 31, 1888, although he is also credited with the earlier murder of Martha Tabram. The murders of Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowson and Mary Jane Kelly occurred between September and November.
The name "Jack the Ripper" came from a letter sent to the media by the alleged perpetrator. Further letters were sent to Scotland Yard, but none contained any significant findings. It all came to an end in November 1888, and no further action was attributed to the ripper.
Since 1888, more than 100 suspects have been investigated, including a Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski. In 2021, DNA evidence of clothing worn by one of the Ripper's victims was an exact match to one of Kosminski's living descendants. Other researchers have found problems with the data, leaving the question of Jack the Ripper's identity unanswered.
