Why Instagram Stories will not be replacing Snapchat
A few days ago, Instagram Stories rolled out which had everyone screaming “Snapchat!” the moment they saw the feature. Everything was pretty much a Ctrl+C and P, save for missing stickers and additional filters/pen colours. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it initially – and started using both Snapchat and Instagram Stories, which made me a very busy person whenever I am trying to capture something “spontaneously”. However, after a few days and the (neon) dust has settled down, I have come to realise something.
Instagram Stories is not going to replace Snapchat.
A friend had just asked me about my thoughts on this just today, and I explained to her why: To me, Instagram still remains a very premeditated visual platform where you get rewarded for styling your shots in the best possible way, with followers. God forbid if you post a dark, blurry video of your friend doing something crazy or a sloppy plate of food (hey Martha!), unless you’re someone that is known for your personality (and not how pretty that brunch looks as a #flatlay). And so Instagrammers have gotten that recipe down pat. With the advent of Stories, sure people will try it, but eventually they will have to choose. Will the follower base they have so carefully cultivated to look for stylised shots and OOTDs really want to know what you ate for lunch? My bet is that these Instagrammers will choose to remain on Snapchat to share their Stories instead, where the very appeal and nature of the app is based off spontaneity and being as real and unpolished as possible.
My gripe about Instagram Stories is also how there’s just too much going on in one app. I follow over 850 people on it and if everyone were to post their Stories I’ll be so busy there’s no time to even look at the actual feed that has already been culled by the infamous algorithm and sorted for my pleasure. Plus there’s still the discover tab that now includes “videos you might enjoy” – yet more time or data that I do not have.
Perhaps it’s too soon to tell, and in the next update Instagram would allow you to curate your own special Stories feed. Or perhaps Snapchat will start incorporating a profile page that includes your special ‘moments’ in a thumbnail grid. Or perhaps Instagram could really step up their Stories game and make it easy to produce stylised pretty photos and videos and Snapchat would be gone. But I have a sneaky suspicion that they will not, and the generation that started using it from day one will not just abandon the platform and merge both into one. Ultimately, while the functionalities of Instagram Stories is pretty much the same as Snapchat, the psychology and use case behind the behaviour of the users are different, simply because the apps are different in nature themselves.
