Despite openly borrowing the temporary social-sharing feature from its younger rival, Instagram seems to have benefited from its existing audience of 500 million monthly active users. The photo-sharing app’s CEO Kevin Systrom revealed the stats on Thursday, which also happened to be Instagram’s sixth anniversary, as part of a BuzzFeed report.
Systrom has never shied away from the controversy that surrounded his app’s plagiarism of Snapchat’s pioneering Stories feature. Both apps allow users to share images and videos that auto-play in a slideshow format, and are only available for 24 hours before disappearing. The 32-year-old addressed the elephant in the room once more, this time with added confidence, stating: “Forget about pride of authorship, internally or externally — it’s working.”
Systrom also detailed the company’s efforts to integrate an ephemeral feature into its app. Initially, Instagram added a check box that allowed for the sharing of temporary photos on a user’s profile. According to Systrom, the idea was scrapped as it simply didn’t resonate during the test phase. Instead, it was decided that ephemerality had to exist outside of the app’s traditional user profiles, which have become a place for periodic uploads of photo and video highlights.
Even though the app did not release official viewership numbers until now, it became immediately clear that Instagram’s users had embraced Stories. In a matter of weeks, brands were producing stories on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Instagram maintained a steady stream of updates, including the ability to auto-save stories, and the introduction of recommended stories in the app’s Explore tab.
Another indication of the feature’s success came earlier this month, when it was revealed that Instagram’s parent company Facebook was testing its own version of the feature on its Messenger platform in Poland — proving once again that when it comes to social media, you can never have too much of a good thing.
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