About a month ago, Instagram introduced something called Instagram Stories. Now, if you are a Snapchatter like I am, you’ll notice that Instagram Stories are basically exactly like Snapchat. They work almost exactly the same.
Here are a couple of extra tutorials for you: this one from Cnet, and this one from Instagram itself.
One of my current faves whom I think is doing a great job of generating fun Instagram stories is my pal, Vicki McLeod. Check her out!
One advantage that Instagram Stories has over Snapchat is that it allows you to post images from your camera roll to your story (to do so, open up your Stories app by swiping right or tapping on the plus sign, then swipe down to access your camera roll). On Snapchat, you can only send images from your camera roll to friends as a message, but not post to your story.
One advantage of Snapchat over Instagram is that Snapchat allows you to have actual conversations with your friends via Snaps. If you want to respond to someone’s Insta Story, you have to DM them. The effect is not quite the same–Snapchat feels more intimate.
In terms of sheer numbers, Instagram has the advantage here. With 400 Million active monthly users, as compared to Snapchat’s 200M, chances are, you may get better views all around from Insta Stories.
In my case, I have about 1500 followers on Snapchat (I don’t know exactly because there’s no stat to tell me exactly how many followers I have). On Instagram, I have a little more than that, about 2300. On Snapchat, my average views per story were around 50. On Instagram Stories? Considerably higher, more in the 75-100 range.
One last thing to take into effect: where are your friends? Some of my friends are on Snap, yeah. But the majority of my friends are Instagram. So if I want to show them my day in the fun and low-impact way that something like Insta Stories or Snapchat does, I’m probably going to do it on Insta, because more people I know will see it.
It’s still early days. According to this article, Insta Stories hasn’t really made much of an impact on Snapchat’s usage at all. That could be because they are potentially different audiences; Snapchat skews a little younger in terms of its demographics than Instagram does. You maybe could consider Insta Stories the grownup version of Snapchat?
What do you think? Have you use the new Instagram Stories? Have you used Snapchat? Have you developed a preference? I’d love to hear in the comments below.