Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status hit 300M users, nearly 2X Snapchat | Hacker News Reader

Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status hit 300M users, nearly 2X Snapchat

techcrunch.com

21 pointsrahulshiv8 comments

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My personal experience with a couple of these apps:

* Snapchat Stories is used by real people to, well, share stories with friends.

* Instagram Stories is flooded with "influencers" peddling diet teas and other shady products.

Is this the case for anyone else?

IG stories is a cesspool just like the meme and gif spam that ruined facebooks newss feed

thats the best thing about stories and was the best thing about Snapchat: you weren't forced to look and this was counterweighted with the limited lifespan of the content.

I don't follow "influencers" so the ig stories I see are just my friends. Snapchat on the other hand has the "featured" section, not that I ever watch that stuff.

I´ve noticed the same things. It´s amazing how many influencers are using Instagram as their main platform. I guess it´s really the mix of posting pictures but also the interaction with the audience on the same platform. They also tend to comment on their pictures in the story - which is quite interesting. They can drive traffic to their content by engaging with the audience "personally". And that all in the same app. I am looking forward to the days when Snapchat is properly adopted and used. In my opinion, there´s great potential behind it. People are yet to discover that though.

No because I unfollowed / muted influencers and now pretty much only see what my friends and family post.

Just with better user experience than awful Snapchat.

Could someone explain why people keep directly comparing Snapchat with Instagram and Whatsapp Status?

To me, Snapchat is a fancy way to tell a small subsection of my friends about something i'm doing / seeing right now which they might enjoy. Everything I see on Snapchat is highly relevant, personal, and real. The whole Snapchat Story thing is not even remotely relevant for a lot of users.

Instagram and Whatsapp Status do the complete opposite thing. Their services are simply another copy of traditional social networks, namely posting perfect pictures of the ideal personality that you wish to be to all of your "friends" - or rather all of the people you ever cared enough about to add to your network. Instagram especially seems to have devolved into a cesspool of poorly hidden advertisements.

It's more or less the digital difference between sending a friend a postcard while on holiday, or submitting an opinion piece to a major newspaper. They seem so different to me that any direct comparison is completely meaningless. Why is this valid?

Is anybody else confused by the spate of articles on Snap's decline as a direct result of 'stories' through Insta the last 6 months yet Snapchat still seems to invariably sit on/near the top of the Play Store/App store charts?

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