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This chapter focuses on the growing and resonant phenomenon in the social media landscape of stories as a designed feature on platforms (e.g. Snapchat, Instagram). Drawing on real-time tracking, corpus-assisted methods, and narrative analysis of Influencers’ Instagram stories, I put forward a technographic method that traces the workings of technology in relation to the design of stories, the values underlying their design, the types of affordances offered, and the actual types of stories that they prompt. I show how what I have described in previous work as small stories become formatted, that is, recognizable as a specific type of communicative practice and social action. Formatting hinges on three interrelated processes, namely the design values, tools, and functionality of stories; the platformed directives or prompts to users for what stories to tell; and the authorization of specific stories as ‘good’ stories to tell …