Instagram and Snapchat Are Turning Into Each Other

The two photo sites are copying each other’s ideas

Instagram announced the release of its new “Instagram Stories” feature today, and it’s a lot like Snapchat.

Instagram Stories will allow users to share special moments of their day with pictures and videos that will appear as a slideshow — like you can do on Snapchat. You’ll also be able to draw and attach emojis onto pictures or videos — like you can do on Snapchat.

Best of all, Instagram Stories will allow photos and videos to disappear completely after 24 hours — another idea taken from Snapchat. Users will also be able to see stories from people they follow, and although they can’t “like” them like they can with regular posts, they can comment on the story in direct messages.

One major difference between Instagram Stories and Snapchat is that the former will allow you to hide your post from certain people so that they won’t see it. Oh wait, no: Snapchat has that same feature too.

While Instagram seems to be copying Snapchat, Snapchat is also taking pages from Instagram’s playbook. The Memories update on Snapchat last month allowed users to save their Snaps and share them at a later time with friends or create new stories with them — just like you can do with Instagram.

Instagram Stories will become available globally over the next few weeks on both iOS and Android systems.

Comments