I think this was a well-written piece, but within a paragraph, you highlight why Instagram Stories is not a good thing for Snapchat:

From a valuation perspective, it’s probably less positive, as VCs who don’t actually understand social network dynamics and long-term monetization care only about monthly active users, growth rate, and trying to “catch Facebook.” This binary view will probably result in a flattening or decline in Snapchat’s valuation as growth rate slows.

For a $20 billion valued company to now all of the sudden has a competing network that is twice their size when it comes to Daily Active Users and on average, users are spending 23% more time on this particular platform than their own, isn’t ideal to say the least. Brands, particularly Nike, in a recent article by AdAge mentioned that within a day they saw over 10x the amount of views by running content in Instagram Stories than ad they published on Snapchat’s best day. At the end of the day, whether VCs fully ‘get’ social network dynamics is a big issue, for at this stage in the game, have heavy influence on the further development of the company, both from a technical and business standpoint.

I absolutely agree that the ‘Snapchat core’ will stick around and they’ll continue to take advantage of the filters, Stories, and sharing those more ‘off-the-cuff’ moments without their friends without worrying about mom and dad seeing their content. But when it comes to Instagram Stories being a good thing for Snapchat as a whole, I would argue Snapchat is a bit more concerned than what this piece suggests.