Stories are dead. Long live Stories.
Instagram announced earlier this week that its Stories feature has over 200 million daily users. As my colleague Napier pointed out, that’s at least 40 million more than Snapchat’s last reported number. I think we can safely say Instagram and Facebook have Snapchat beaten.
158 million active users is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s worth noting that Snapchat’s meteoric growth slowed considerably when Instagram Stories rolled out. For an app that’s never turned its parent company a profit, any dip in user activity is probably not a good thing.
Trust us, we’re pretty tired of talking about Facebook stealing from Snapchat. The bit is so old it’s covered in cobwebs by this point. But when we originally used it, it actually was a joke. We’d notice a small similarities between the two apps, and it sounded whimsically hyperbolic to say Instagram was “stealing” from Snapchat.
But it’s not a joke anymore. Facebook and Instagram have cleaned out Snapchat’s house and left it tied up in the basement. Now all that’s left is to see how long Snapchat holds onto its current audience.
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