Last week we discussed the plans of Facebook to launch a service similar to Snapchat in which a feed would only remain for 24 hours and then disappear. However, the big news of the week came not from Facebook but from Instagram, a brand owned by Facebook, when they took us all by surprise and launched “Instagram Stories.”
This feature will allow users to share all the messages, photos, and videos of their day, without having to post directly to their profile. Exactly like Snapchat, these stories would disappear after 24 hours, while conversations and messages would stay private. Also, users now have the ability to select who they want to see their stories.
As we said last week, Snapchat is changing the rules of the game in cyberspace. Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at CCS Insight, says Snapchat should be flattered, “The battle among social providers is immense. This move is clearly a massive compliment to Snapchat. It is hard to be novel in this market when it is so easy to follow,” he explained to Marketing Week.
Snapchat was recently valued at $22.7 billion in May, and have been on the rise since, stealing the vibe out of all other social media platforms. Facebook has even tried to buy Snapchat more than three years ago, but CEO Evan Spiegel, turned down the $3 billion offer.
Seeing the market slipping between its fingers, Facebook and its sub-brand Instagram decided that they have no other option but to boldly imitate the successful rising star. “Our mission has always been to capture and share the world’s moments, not just the world’s most beautiful moments,” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told The New York Times. “Stories will alleviate a ton of the pressure people have to post their absolute best stuff.”
Some analysts considered this step as nothing but a “digital and business war.” “That’s the only way I can interpret Facebook’s apparent go-forward strategy for tackling Snapchat, a social media juggernaut Facebook once tried to buy,” wrote Lance Ulanoff for Mashable.
“As of today, Facebook appears to be done pursuing Snapchat. It has its own rapidly growing social media platform, Instagram, that, not-too-coincidentally, appeals to the same highly desirable and digitally engaged tween and teen-set. And now that platform includes Instagram has Stories.”
For others though, it was only a legitimate business move to protect Instagram’s market share; after all, Snapchat did not actually invent the concept behind Stories, it is a still chronically arranged timeline similar to Facebook and Twitter (although the 24- hour idea was exclusive to Snapchat!).
For me, I think Snapchat won’t lose much. It is still looked at as the origin of the stories concept, and Snapchat influencers had already accumulated a load of followers that are hard to shuffle back to Instagram. We are yet to see how things will play out between the rivals.
The battle among social networks
The battle among social networks
