Why Creators Should Love Instagram’s Rip-off of Stories
Instagram vs. Snapchat, who cares? We all win.
Last Tuesday Instagram unveiled Instagram Stories, described as “a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile.” This translates to a photo/video slideshow that disappears after 24 hours. AKA Snapchat Stories.
For the longest time, Instagram and Snapchat seemed to sit at the opposite ends of the “camera-centered social platform” spectrum. Let’s look at some of the key differences in functions and typical user behaviors:
- Archival vs. fleeting
- Composed vs. candid
- Less frequent sharing vs. spam away!
- Consumption vs. creation
With the launch of Snapchat Memories and now Instagram Stories, the platforms have officially collided head-on. As publishers, brands, and media makers (including individual users), you might be wondering how to make sense of this death match. What content should go where? Which platform deserves your time and investment? Instagram vs. Snapchat: who will emerge victorious?
Because we like arguing with ourselves:
On the one hand, Instagram has a better discovery mechanism, so it’s less of a hassle to actively find and consume content. That’s already a big incentive for brands and publishers to go all in on Instagram Stories instead of trying to rebuild a following on a notoriously hard-to-understand platform.
On the other hand, part of Snapchat’s appeal is its unpolished and intimate nature, at least on the non-Discover side. You may not care about Snapping funny faces (complete with racist filters 😒 Snapchat, what’s good?) for 20 of your closest friends to see, but you don’t necessarily want all 200 of your Instagram followers to see them (there’s a way to limit who sees what on Instagram, but it’s obscure and involves an extra step).
On a third hand, Instagram’s play may work just as well as Facebook’s move to slow down Twitter back in 2011, when the Zuckerberg & co. launched Subscribe. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine argues that Subscribe didn’t have to be better than Twitter or steal all its users; it just had to be convenient and good enough to stem the competitor’s future growth. Instagram Stories is missing some of Snapchat’s most charming features, but that might not matter if Instagram can hook in the members of its 400-million-strong user base who never really took to Snapchat, in addition to future users. That’s Disruption 101!
On a fourth hand that we had to borrow from someone else because wow this is just too many limbs, Snapchat has a key demographic that brands are desperate to get at: youths. Snapchat is the most popular social network for teens, with Instagram coming in close behind. And although parents are slowly hopping onto the platform, their presence probably won’t prompt a mass exodus of young people just yet, since communication is more closed-off on Snapchat. So if you’re hip and cool and want to hang with the future of our country, don’t abandon Snapchat entirely for Instagram just yet.
TL;DR: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regardless, this kind of competition most benefits users. At the end of the day, a Story — whether on Instagram or Snapchat — is just, well, a story, which is a tool and paradigm as old as time. It opens up a whole new channel for media makers looking to create and share content for reach different audiences.
Shefali Kulkarni, BBC News’ Audience Engagement Producer in North America, told The Shed:
I say there’s a quality factor that separates Instagram Stories from Snapchat Stories. Instagram is a photo-centric platform in my opinion. Snapchat is a transparency platform — if you want to give people a sense of behind the scenes, then I think Snapchat is great.
Even if the features on Instagram and Snapchat are becoming startlingly similar, that doesn’t erase the audiences and cultures that have blossomed on the respective platforms.
This post is adapted from Issue #10 of The Shed, where we discuss the tools we use to tell stories. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, read our archives on TinyLetter and Medium, and tell a friend!
