I'll agree with you. I strongly believe instagram is taking over snaptchat. All of my friends switched to instagram from snaptchat. Some of them will still post on both instagram and snaptchat but it feels like they keep posting on snaptchat until their last set of contacts move from snaptchat to instagram itself.
I do believe that the people working for snaptchat are trying their best, and they are innovative etc, its just seems that instagram itself has become the new hip and its seriously competing with snaptchat.
It's interesting how Facebook has such a keen eye to spot the next pivot and move their giant ship inch by inch methodically in the right direction. They did it with newsfeed for the main site, main site to mobile transition(albeit with the html5 fiasco thrown in for a year), carving out messenger(and pivoting it to another screen to show ads) and now pivoting Instagram to subsume Snapchat.
Kinda how Netflix vs HBO is a question of - how fast can Netflix become HBO before HBO becomes Netflix. Instagram is definitely trying their best to have part of its identity be Snapchat. What is Snapchat trying to become rapidly before Instagram subsumes Snapchat? The walls are closing in fast(like it happened with Twitter) and if they don't figure out the answer soon they will suffer the same fate.
Facebook's strategy certainly has worked so far, but I doubt it's sustainable. Every time Instagram copies a Snapchat feature it is a pivot from their original vision. Unless Snapchat starts copying Instagram, over time the two will diverge, one is a focused and coherent product, the other becomes a feature laden beast.
Also internally I can't imagine how the Instagram engineers feel about their roadmap being "continue to copy and shoehorn Snapchat features into our app".
I do think the product team at Snapchat is stellar though, they are creative and innovative and in-tune with what young people want.