Will Instagram Stories Replace Snapchat?

Instagram Stories

This week, Instagram announced that users can create stories that will appear for 24 hours, like Snapchat.

Here’s how it works:

You’ll see stories from people you follow in a bar at the top of your feed — from your best friends to your favorite popular accounts. When there’s something new to see, their profile photo will have a colorful ring around it.

To view someone’s story, just tap on their profile photo. It’s easy to view stories at your own pace: tap to go back and forward or swipe to jump to another person’s story. If you want to comment on something you see, you can tap and send a private message to that person on Instagram Direct. Unlike regular posts, there are no likes or public comments.

What about Privacy? 

Your story follows the privacy settings of your account. If you set your account to private, your story is visible only to your followers. However, you can also easily hide your entire story from anyone you don’t want to see it, even if they follow you. When watching your own story, swipe up to check out who’s seen each photo and video. You can even choose to feature a particular part of your story by posting it on your profile.

What’s next for Snapchat? 

It’s no secret that at one point- Facebook owned Instagram attempted to buy Snapchat but they were unsuccessful. And if you are a snapchat user, you will notice a lot of similarities between the Instagram Stories feature and Snapchat. The only exception is that Instagram is not offering filters at this point like Snapchat. Just a few months ago, some social media outlets were saying that Instagram was losing steam as Snapchat was growing in popularity with large companies creating ad campaigns that ran just on Snapchat.

Sony Pictures’ Ghostbusters purchased the first “dual lens” ad that allowed Snapchat users to shoot the character Slimer. Snapchat also released new geo stickers for users, another feature that is not yet available on Instagram.

[scroller style=”sc1″ title=”More Tech Stories ” title_size=”17″ display=”cats” cats=”50″ number_of_posts=”8″ speed=”5000″]