The biggest photo-sharing network, Instagram, now seems to enjoy its rise to success. Last Thursday, it revealed that "Instagram Stories" hits 100 million views daily, about one-fifth of the company's 500 million viewers.
The Facebook-owned network which turns 6 years old today, poses a viable alternative to Snapchat.
What is Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories allows the user to share video clips and photos that disappears after 24 hours. Like Snapchat, the user can decorate the image with texts, drawings and emojis. Clearly, it is a clone of Snapchat Stories and Instagram owns up to the similarity, MacWorld reported.
"I agree, the video format in our viewer does feel similar to what a lot of other people are doing," Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told BuzzFeed. "I think that's fine for now, but it's not where we want to end up. We want to innovate and improve the experience."
In comparison, Snapchat prided of its 100 million daily users last April, 60 percent of whom use Instagram Stories to share live media, Bloomberg reported.
"Ephemerality had to be adopted in a way that worked," Systrom added. "And a signal that it is working is that after just a few months, over 100 million people, daily, use Instagram Stories. So, forget about pride of authorship, internally or externally-it's working."
Instagram Stories Made More Simple
Although, Instagram did not originally invent "Stories," the company still gets the credit for simplifying the feature making it more spontaneous and accessible to a larger audience. Two months after its launching, a bigger audience has definitely embraced it.
What differentiates Snapchat from Instagram is that former allows you to share contents through a single track called a "Story". Once a snap is 24 hours old, users can no longer view it unless you reshare it. Instagram, on the other hand, lets you share content through two tracks: the feed and stories. Your feed is permanent, whereas your stories have a 24-hour shelf life. By combining the longevity of feed posts with the 24-hour duration of its story segments, the user can generate urgency while providing consistent and engaging contents to other instagram users, SocialMediaExaminer reported.
Still, Snapchat retains the excitement that Instagram has yet to imitate. In Snapchat, you can add fun and interesting filters or turn your selfie into different animated characters. If Instagram can create the same feature, it might beat Snapchat on its own game.
