In a race to the top in live video blogging, Instagram continues to smash Snapchat with a total of 250 million active daily users as of the latest. Disappearing videos might be at Snapchat's core, but Instagram is now taking the lead. Could forecast be true after all?
Instagram takeover
Month after month of updates being released since Instagram had launched Stories in August 2016, the disappearing video feature of the platform has gained a winning streak over competitor Snapchat. A new report has revealed that Instagram Stories alone now has 250 million daily active users since April 2017.
This figure sees a significant jump from 150 million in January and 100 million in October. Overall, the photo sharing platform has a total of 700 million monthly users, while Snapchat only has 166 million, way below Instagram Stories' monthly active users.
Continuous growth
"From new creative tools to location stories, we've been focused on making it easier to share any moment and uncover stories from the accounts and interests that matter most to you", Instagram tells TechCrunch. "As a result, we are continuing to see strong growth both in the U.S. and internationally."
In an interview with CNBC, Facebook's global head of sales Carolyn Everson underscores the speedy growth of Instagram Stories in less than a year. Facebook owns Instagram. "Today on the platform, we not only have 250 million people using it but actually a third [of the most viewed stories] are businesses using Instagram Stories and one million are advertisers", notes Everson.
Snapchat forecast
Since 2016, there have been forecasts reporting that Snapchat is coming to a doomsday period. As evidence, its stock price has consistently been dipping down since last year. As of 7:50 pm SGT of 21 June, Snapchat's stock price fell by 3.19 percent.
At the same time, Snapchat is currently trading at US$17.31, just above its IPO price of US$17. In usual nonchalance demeanour, Snapchat chief executive Evan Spiegel just shrugged the report off.
