When The Grasshopper Surpasses Their Sensei

The Tale of Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories

With success comes new challenges. For Snapchat, this means everyone is trying to replicate exactly what they are doing.

In June of 2016, Facebook-owned Instagram announced a new feature they were introducing called Instagram Stories.

Essentially Instagram Stories is a watered down version of Snapchat. Their features make it easy for Instagram’s 600 million users to adapt the viral ‘stories’ habit easily.

Snapchat And Instagram Stories Go Toe-To-Toe

Fast forward four months and things start getting pretty interesting.

This week (early January) Instagram announced that Instagram Stories has accumulated 150 million daily active users. That’s exactly how many users Snapchat had as of June 2016.

Which means it’s taken Instagram Stories approximately four months to accumulate the same number of users it took Snapchat over four years to attract.

It’s a pretty incredible feat for Instagram to gain so much traction in such a short period.

Why Does It Matter

Snapchat is notoriously known as a difficult platform for people to adapt to, especially for marketers. It’s viewed as having a steep learning curve, being impossible to amass an audience, and a waste of time.

Instagram has solved for this because most people are already familiar with the platform, it is much simpler to grow your audience (or use the one you already have), and it is much simpler to adapt to.

This has resulted in massive amounts of Instagram’s users adapting to these new features to capitalize on the benefits of using ‘stories.’

Since Instagram already has over 600 million users, with only 150 million of them using Instagram Stories, expect the number to keep rising dramatically.

What To Do About It

I’m going to keep on utilizing both services until there is a clear defined winner. Snapchat is still more entertaining, but Instagram Stories is simpler.

A trickle-down effect will be, as people get used to Instagram Stories; we will also see people be able to adapt to Snapchat easier.

“Think of Instagram Stories as the training wheels for Snapchat.” — Peter Schroeder

People who are in the older generations are going to gradually start getting used to how to use stories.

Regardless what Instagram does, the young generations are going to stay true to Snapchat. Parents still have yet to figure it out, and the youth are safe there for now.

Summary

The competition is real and will cause the two companies not to sleep on each other. It will keep them innovating, which is a big win for us!

Expect to see amazing new features to come out for both Snapchat and Instagram Stories to try to pull you in.

For now, there is room for both.

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