Who Is Winning In The Fight Between Instagram and Snapchat Stories?
31 August 2016, 14:10 | Updated: 8 May 2017, 17:09
The numbers are in!
Remember when Instagram launched their story feature last month and waged all out war against Snapchat? We've been shook ever since tbh.
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In case you've been on holiday in a WiFi-less land for a whole month, Instagram launched a new feature at the start of August that allows users to compile moments from the day into an Instagram Story. It was a clone of Snapchat's feature which also allows users to add images and videos to a live story which lasts 24 hours. And just like Snapchat, you could customise your stories on Instagram with emojis, filters and text.
The blatant copying by Instagram would have been funny were it not for the fact that Insta has 400 million active users while Snapchat has about 100 million users, therefore Insta has a huge numbers advantage over Snapchat. The introduction of 'memories' was seen by a lot of users as an attempt by Instagram to kill off Snapchat but many in the industry believe it was, in fact, a preemptive move by Insta to stop their users migrating to Snapchat - keeping them hooked on their app while limiting the growth of their rival.
Has it worked? Well, not necessarily but it's still early days.
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In a report on BuzzFeed news, four third-party data providers found that there wasn't any meaningful decline in Snapchat's numbers in the weeks following the introduction of Instagram Stories.
Danielle Levitas, SVP of research at App Annie, one of the data providers who compiled the figures, said to BuzzFeed, "About a month into the launch of Instagram’s Stories feature, we are still not seeing a significant increase of time spent in the app versus Snapchat. While there are several factors that may be contributing to this, the early stage of adoption by its user base is still ongoing."
It will be interesting to see how many people continue posting Instagram stories. Personally speaking, I'm a Snapchat hoe and I find their features more fun to use but that clearly hasn't stopped many heathens on my Instagram feed using their story feature instead. Will it be a battle to the death or can they peacefully co-exist together? Only time will tell.
Hbu?
