Stories: The Future of Social Media?

Visual content is becoming more powerful than ever on social media. The more we use our mobile phones, the bigger the urge to share a glimpse of our daily lives through images and videos. The usage of Stories is on the rise on social media while news feeds see a decline of usage. This brings out a big question; will social media news feeds disappear over time?

“Another important shift that we’re seeing across the industry is the growth of Stories. We expect Stories are on track to overtake posts in feeds as the most common way that people share across all social apps. That’s because Stories is a better format for sharing multiple quick video clips throughout your day. The growth of Stories will have an impact on how we build products and think about our business, including WhatsApp and Instagram, which are the #1 and #2 most-used Stories products in the world.” — Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

It is estimated that there are currently over 970 million accounts who post Stories daily on Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger. And the growth is not slowing down soon, as there is an estimate that there will be more than 1 billion social accounts using Stories by the end of the year.

This scrolling left-to-right story format is a change from the traditional downward scroll we have become accustomed to on Blogs, websites, and online news platforms, Snapchat started the story era with Snapchat stories and then other platforms have adopted it as a key way of sharing content. Even WhatsApp and Messenger have the story format now.

Snapchat has been the source of inspiration for this trend that took over all the big social platforms. It was the popularity among younger demographics and the rise of ephemeral content through vertical video narratives that skyrocketed its popularity. It is estimated that 81% of its daily users post Stories, as it’s a core feature of the platform.

However, Instagram took this trend to the next level by introducing it to a larger audience. There are currently more than 300 million daily Stories user on Instagram, which accounts for 60% of its audience. When it comes to businesses, more than 50% of them create Instagram Stories each month and this statistic is expected to increase over the next months.

Analyzing the differences between the two platforms.

1. Instagram’s Stories feed is like a secondary feed that’s been combined with the main one to compliment it as a quicker, more casual form of content sharing. It helps viewers see the whole story, not just the highlights. That’s what strengthens the relationship and makes us feel closer together. Snapchat, on the other hand, is all about ephemeral content sharing, so it only has one form of content to share and is simply just mixed with partner content.
2. Snapchat relies on 24-hour stories from users, providing content that is purely episodic and temporary to viewers. Instagram content can be delivered episodically through stories or more permanently through the feed.
3. The Stories features in both apps provide filters that you can apply to your images and videos. What sets Snapchat apart are the geofilters, face-mapping filters, and motion filters. Instagram story filters are limited to overall colour, contrast, and lighting adjustments. Snapchat filters provide more options for customization, motion, and branding from the filters themselves.
4. The connected Facebook friends list — with the added opportunities for simple search and discovery — makes Instagram Stories a much easier platform for finding and retaining new followers.

One big problem with this new Stories feature is that people who follow hundreds or even thousands of users will have a hard time scrolling through the Stories feed to view only the Stories from the users they’re interested in viewing.

Overall, the implementation of Stories is a bold move and one that we’ll need to watch closely to see how it evolves while observing whether the majority of users will continue to use it after the “newness” of the feature wears off a bit.