Instagram Stories records 100 million active users in two months

At just two months old, Instagram Stories has already carved its space into the online activity of  100 million active users all over the world, as it looks poised to race past Snapchat.

The numbers are astonishing when put in contrast with Snapchat's daily active users at a 150 million, patiently gathered over a period of five years as compared to Instagram Stories' two months. But then again it was expected for Instagram Stories to either be a complete and abject success or failure and nothing in between.

Instagram's core platform, which turned six yesterday, retains more than 500 million users, meaning Instagram Stories had the potential to be adopted by this colossal user base.

There was a lot of hue and cry about the alleged rip-off from one their competitors, and according to Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, Snapchat deserve all the credit (published in an article on TechCrunch). An excerpt from the article shows Systrom acknowledges the fact that Snapchat invented the format of ephemerality. He said,

“When you are an innovator, that’s awesome. Just like Instagram deserves all the credit for bringing filters to the forefront. This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it."

Facebook had previously enjoyed a major chunk of the younger demographic user base when they bought Instagram for a billion dollars, before Snapchat's popularity began to snowball. Soon, Snapchat was big enough to challenge Facebook owned Instagram in the battle of photo sharing platforms and that did not go down well with Facebook.

The social media giant tried to outsmart Snapchat with a lot of failed efforts such as Poke and Slingshot, before eventually developing the inspiration of a lifetime, Instagram Stories. Given the fact that Instagram Stories has taken flight, quite impressively so, the numbers may be a cause for concern for Snapchat.

Although, Snapchat which has since witnessed a transformation and is now a product of Snap Inc., has exhibited ambition and branched out into the wearable hardware segment with Spectacles. One of Snapchat's efforts to regain its supremacy in the minds of the fickle younger users.

There are a lot of young social media enthusiasts that Snapchat and Instagram can share and co-exist but alas! That is not the world we live in.

If judged solely by the numbers, Instagram Stories is here to stay, has the potential to be bigger than Snapchat by this time next year, and this battle certainly will be interesting to watch.