If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?
Instagram just announced that they’re introducing “Stories”, a feature that allows people to create video montages documenting their daily activities that disappear in 24 hours. Sounds familiar? Cough Snapchat cough.
In their blog, Instagram said, “Today, we’re introducing Instagram Stories, a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile. As you share multiple photos and videos, they appear together in a slideshow format: your story.”
“With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day – with as much creativity as you want. You can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools. The photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid or in feed,” they added.
How to use Instagram’s “Stories”, you ask?
You’ll see stories from people you follow in a bar at the top of your feed – from your best friends to your favourite popular accounts. When there’s something new to see, their profile photo will have a colourful ring around it.
To view someone’s story, just tap on their profile photo. It’s easy to view stories at your own pace: tap to go back and forward or swipe to jump to another person’s story. If you want to comment on something you see, you can tap and send a private message to that person on Instagram Direct. Unlike regular posts, there are no likes or public comments.
Your story follows the privacy settings of your account. If you set your account to private, your story is visible only to your followers. However, you can also easily hide your entire story from anyone you don’t want to see it, even if they follow you. When watching your own story, swipe up to check out who’s seen each photo and video. You can even choose to feature a particular part of your story by posting it on your profile.
If you noticed in the video above, along with “Stories”, Instagram also introduced a drawing feature and what looks like stickers. Yes, just like Snapchat too.
Um, well isn’t Instagram’s “Stories” the whole point of us using Snapchat? Why would we want to use Instagram for that?
We get it – it’s probably because Snapchat has about 150 million daily users (where as Instagram has 300 million) and the number is rising as we speak. But the apps come from very different standings/approaches i.e. Instagram is a place of carefully curated stylish photos while Snapchat is an on-the-go anything goes platform. So we’re not sure how this is going to go down.
What do you guys think? Yay or nay? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Instagram.
