Just eight months ago Instagram copied a Snapchat feature, and made the ‘Stories’ option to help people get more out of their image & video social network. As of the most recent numbers, Instagram is now boasting more than 200 million daily users, compared to about 158 million that Snapchat is getting.
Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, it might not be a real surprise that they were able to overtake the original pioneers of the feature.
With about half of all Instagram’s daily users taking part in the Stories feature, this is obviously one of their most successful options ever. This is why they have been pushing so much effort into continuing to expand the options, often by tossing in features that, once again, Snapchat came up with.
One fairly new feature is that those making stories will be able to add emoji, stickers, text or other things onto the videos that they make. This adds a whole new fun dimension to the story since you are essentially editing the video in any way you want it. This is, not surprisingly, a feature that has been on Snapchat for a while now.
Stickers have long been a popular option on Instagram and Snapchat. To expand their use, Instagram is copying another Snapchat feature, which is allowing users to make their own stickers. This can be a selfie, or anything else that is desired. The stickers can then be edited to look exactly as desired.
While the majority of all these features are used just for fun, they also have a lot of great marketing uses. The more unique and enjoyable a marketer can make their story, the more it is likely to get seen. Keeping up on the latest features of Instagram, especially now that it is larger than Snapchat for stories, is going to be more important than ever.
