| > Instagram: Stories are autoplay. You click once and it's a slideshow. So you can assume metric here are orders of magnitude higher than what it should be. If autoplay means people watch more stories, then so be it. I don't understand what you're trying to say or suggest here. Also fun fact: Snapchat used to have auto-play before they redesigned their app. > Instagram: Stories at the top of the app is a very bad user experience. If an users spends more time in story, he spends less time in scrolling instagram feed. (Nobody in Instagram wants to talk about that). Classic example of HN hubris. You have no numbers but yet are so quick to make such a bold claim. Do you really think Instagram doesn't know what the feed engagement numbers are before and after adding stories at the top? Do you honestly in your heart believe that this number wasn't very closely tracked and tested over and over again with different designs, prototypes, and user research? If so, I think that's an incredibly naive notion and anyone who's worked at one of these high growth consumer internet companies can attest to that. > Snapchat: People post whenever they feel like posting. Instagram: People post when they feel something is of very high quality. This isn't remotely true even from a pure eye-test perspective. Instagram's stories cover Snapchat's usecase pretty well. I've been a user of both products and many of my friend groups use one of these products at least. I have a lot of personal experiences and industry knowledge to draw from but I prefer to talk numbers (which speak for themselves quite honestly). > Snapchat: Doesn't want to grow the number of users as it doesn't matter to company's revenue. FB makes 75-80% of revenue with just it's 10-20% of users which snapchat already own. This is just silly. Of course Snap wants to grow its userbase. Perhaps they're not concerned with growth rate in the near future but you can sure as hell bet that the market is closely watching. To believe otherwise is naive. I mean just look at analyst expectation quarter over quarter for companies in a similar category (see: Twitter). The market wants to see consistent growth. Their whole value is predicated on growth and engagement. There are pretty simple levers that Snapchat can pull to grow its business and all of those levers fall under two categories: Growth and Engagement. Just look at their massive Google Cloud deal to see if they care about growth or not. They pre-committed billions over the course of a couple of years for cloud services alone. |
They did implement it and rolled it back. I think it has to do with use case. Instagram is very much like Facebook in that it is an addictive feed style. Snapchat is more selection.
> Re: Growth, The Market, Engagement
Last I checked, the biggest lever they have is ad revenue, and how quickly that grows. That is the road to profitability if there is one, isn't it? Their engagement is plenty for advertisers - I don't see a 3 min boost in engagement being reflecting in hoards of advertisers. That could even be reflective of a user experience that scares away more users and ends up being a net ad negative. Growth helps, but they have valuable users already. See below for more. As far as the market, with their IPO and stock terms, I'm not so sure they care much there. The founders and employees got their short term money, as did the company in general.
> Instagram's stories cover Snapchat's use case pretty well.
In my experience, they are completely different. It could be age related perhaps?
Instagram is a profile you curate of moments for you and others to look back on, a feed to follow people and fun accounts, and stories are mostly celebrities.
Snapchat is for a night out or other fun activities, messaging your close friends, and an app to pull out for fun when bored. At least yet, I don't know of any of my friends using Instagram in those ways, though as we know, Facebook has been trying nonstop to get into those with things like Facebook Direct, the Snapchat full clone in Messenger, etc. So far, the only thing that has stuck is stories, and it worked because it was much better for following celebrities and the like, not at the close personal level. The viewers and network effect is what gives IG stories such high user numbers. I doubt the creation rate is there from what I know of my friends. Again, maybe it's different for older demo's.
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As far as numbers go, there are two things keeping Snapchat afloat as a company (forget the speculative stock price here):
1. They have a lot of users that Instagram doesn't. Advertisers love young people, and that's where they are.
2. Instagram/Facebook have yet to crack into the personal messaging aspect like Snapchat has.
I actually hate feed apps and don't use that part of Snapchat at all usually, and if I do, it's in the same way as trending news on Facebook (hey what's going on in the world real quick). I deleted my Instagram pretty quickly and opted for my own personal photo collection. Snapchat is something I use for my close friends - I mainly message about 10 people or less, and view stories of maybe 20. But I use it way more than Messenger, which is used for group chats and acquaintances who don't have my iMessage.
Even with the slow user growth rate, those users aren't going away (yet). Time will tell how that plays out in the future. But the moat that's keeping Snapchat alive right now is young users and close personal communication. If those two pieces go elsewhere, I don't see them surviving. I also don't see those going to anything IG/Facebook/Messenger has put out yet.