The popular social media site, Instagram, is known for its endless timeline of cool pictures. In fact, Instagram has 500 million monthly active users, 300 million daily actives and now 250 million users on its direct messaging feature. Like any social media outlet, updates happen all the time, but this particular Instagram update has users thinking it’s Snapchat II.
Users will be introduced to the “stories” feature. Like Snapchat Stories, the feature allows you to post 24-hour ephemeral photo and video slideshows that disappear. The spin is, Instagram Stories appear at the top of the old feed, so your followers will inevitably see them without you needing to build a new audience in a different app. Some features with this new “stories” update include:
“Instagram Stories appear in a row at the top of the main feed instead of on a separate screen like Snapchat, and are sorted by who you interact with most, not purely reverse chronological order like Snapchat. Anyone you allow to follow you on Instagram can see your Instagram Stories, though you can also block people, as opposed to building a separate network on Snapchat.”
Cool? Maybe. Copying? Well, according to Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, when asked about the app similarities, he says, “They deserve all the credit,” but insisted “This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.”
Even more of an update, Facebook is caking their new feature, “stories” too. The Facebook feature lets people share photos and videos that disappear, and users can write over the photos and add annotations… all features Snapchat is known for.