Instagram Introduces Stories

We’re big fans of Instagram at JUMP. And Snapchat. They’re both fun apps that offer a visual way to communicate and share your life with friends and family. It even offers a way to connect you to brands you love and see exclusive news, product releases, and more.

Instagram Stories is nearly identical to Snapchat stories.  Users can share photos or videos of their lives, add text or using a drawing tool to share with their followers.  It’s not a very innovative feature by any means, but we already have our wheels turning thinking about how brands can take advantage of this opportunity and the benefits it offers over Snapchat.

It’s just one app to maintain – One perk to Instagram copying Snapchat (at least for brands) is that there are fewer brands that have taken advantage of Snapchat to reach their customers, but a lot more brands already using Instagram. It’s understandable for a business to want to combine their social media into fewer apps.

They appear at the top of the page – Instagram stories appear at the very top of a user’s page on the app. Unlike Snapchat, it’s the first thing people will see when they log into Instagram. We can only assume that because of that ease of access, people will use it. On the flip side – if a user wants to share something in the spur of the moment, there’s an extra step of opening Instagram, then clicking the left ‘+’ button to open the feature, whereas Snapchat opens directly to the camera feature.

instagram stories

Instagram becomes more real – Since the inception of the app in 2010, people have been on the search of the perfect “Instagram-Worthy” photo. The perfect lighting, filter and focal point – it’s almost become a feed of perfect moments of people, food, activities and more. With the stories feature, people will feel compelled to share the same types of moments that typically get shared on Snapchat (sometimes less than perfect, or ‘Instagram-Worthy’ food, etc.). We can see brands utilizing this new feature to show users how much work goes on behind the scenes to create the photos they share on their platform.

It will take some getting used to, but we think Instagram Stories will have staying power. Do you have anything to add to this story? If so, let us know in the comments below!

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