Instagram Stories: If you can’t beat it buy it, if you can’t buy it ape it

After Facebook’s attempts to push Snapchat out of the market fell flat with Slingshot, the company appears to have found the master stroke with Instagram Stories.

Instagram Stories is the newest feature from the Facebook owned photo sharing platform which is identical to Snapchat Stories, a slideshow of pictures and short 10 second videos that users can share with their friends. These stories would disappear after 24 hours.

"Classic Instagram was like seeing Superman's life, Stories is like getting to see Clark Kent's life too. Clearly Instagram is not just a wall to be adorned with frames capturing those oh-so-perfect shots but now also a window to glimpse the madness that goes into achieving the perfectness," shared Anuja Deora, Business Director, Filter Coffee Communications.

Mark Zuckerberg’s rivalry with Snapchat, a budding startup at the time, sparked off three years ago, when their attempt to takeover the company for $3 billion was rebuked. It has now evolved from a startup to one of Facebook’s biggest competitors, valued at around $18 billion.

"Of course it is complete rip-off of Snapchat but then from a brand point of view it means one lesser social media network to invest on," Deora exclaimed. "It will work very well for brands/influencers who have already established their community on Instagram. Brands can look at live event updates, behind the scenes, and influencer activities without worrying about the aesthetics, great quality of images, being overly spammy or creative captions. The more candid you are about your product/services, higher is the customer connect and recall."

Facebook has since desperately tried to emulate features that were once exclusive to Snapchat. Slingshot, was one of Facebook’s attempts to neutralize rival Snapchat’s appeal among social media users.

Slingshot failed to find any takers and was subsequently removed from the app store few months ago. Facebook has since tried to incorporate Snapchat’s ephemeral features into their own core platform with the recently announced Quick Updates.

The social media giant now seem to be launching an all out offence on Snapchat by leveraging Instagram’s popularity as a photo-sharing platform with more than 500 million active users worldwide.

While Snapchat may have fewer number of users, it has been growing like a wildfire, giving other platforms enough reason to worry.

Although it can be argued that Facebook is blatantly ripping off a rival, Instagram Stories has the potential to become a successful feature. Plus, Snapchat too is aping Memories. Wonder how these mismashed network will perform.