Introducing Saved Stories and Homepage Story Feed

Community is the heart of Vocal, and today we are excited to introduce some new updates that are all about supporting each other, fostering deeper connections and relationships, and improving your reading experience.

Saved Stories

Have you ever found a story but got distracted and didn’t have time to read it? Or have you found a story that resonates so much that you want to experience it again? Our new Saved Stories feature lets you save stories (AKA bookmark them) to read later. You can save a story from a stories card, or directly in a story at the top or in the sticky bottom action bar. Saved stories are displayed in chronological order based on when you saved them, making it easy to come back to stories you want to read later. If you want to remove a story from your saved stories feed, you can simply unsave a story by clicking the save story icon again.

Homepage Story Feed

As part of this update, we’ve revamped the homepage for the first time in over three years. Your Story Feed, Saved Stories, and Subscribed Creators are now featured up front and center when you log in. Think of this as your personalized Vocal feed, composed of all the creators and their stories who matter most to you, whether free or paid (pledged). As always, stories in your feed are displayed in chronological order, void of any algorithms.

Highlighting Subscribed Creators

Additionally, we are now showcasing the creators you subscribe and pledge to on your homepage. Previously, you could access this through Your Subscriptions page, but we felt that was too many steps to navigate to and we wanted to make it easier for you to personalize your feed. We hope that by prominently displaying these core features, we can invoke more community engagement and improve your experience on Vocal.

What We Are Working On…

We’re sprinting hard behind the scenes to bring you a feature that's long been in the works: Exclusive Stories. Unlike regular stories which are published in Vocal communities, Exclusive Stories will live directly on your profile and appear in the homepage feed for your paid subscribers. Additionally, more paid subscriber features, like direct communication between paid subscribers and creators (think DMs), are coming soon.

Here’s an exclusive sneak peak at Exclusive Stories:

It’s your feedback that helps shape and drive Vocal forward. As always, we are forever grateful for your support and helping our community grow. We would love to hear your feedback and thoughts in the comments below.