Instagram's Snapchat Clone Is Now More Popular Than Snapchat -- and It's Only 8 Months Old (cnbc.com)

Facebook's top Snapchat clone Instagram Stories has hit 200 million daily active users, surpassing the last count of 161 million that Snapchat announced alongside its IPO. Instagram Stories launched in August, hit 100 million dailies in October, and 150 million in January, so it's hardly slowing as it grows. Meanwhile, Instagram is getting faster at copying even Snapchat's most technologically advanced features with a series of global iOS and Android updates. A report adds: Along with this announcement, Facebook is introducing new 'sticker' tools for Instagram, to make it a more appealing alternative to Snapchat, and more engaging for its users. Now Instagram's users can turn their selfies into stickers, which they'll be able to easily share, or pin within a video. The app is also launching new Geostickers for Chicago, London, Madrid and Tokyo to apply over photos. The stickers have been designed by artists from the respective cities, enabling users to tap to learn more about the art.

Comments

BULLSHIT

[darkain]

As an active user of NORMAL Instagram, I'm going to call absolute total bullshit on this. This is just like how Facebook tried to claim their video service was more popular than YouTube because they set videos to auto-play on the feed AND auto-loop, artificially inflating their view counts. With Instagram now, if you tap on someone's user icon in the normal feed, it'll take you to their stories instead of their profile. This artificially inflates their "stories" user count by taking people to a place they never wanted to go to in the first place (stories vs viewing someone's profile)

Re:BULLSHIT

[cloud.pt]

Well, since there's absolutely no way I can disable stories, both in Facebook, Facebook for Android and Messenger for Android, I can really see them selling this to advertisers:

"Hey, we have this new feature that engages users to . Furthermore our 7B user-base is adhering so much we have already surpassed Snapchat. You can purchase ad-space on Facebook for just and you also get access to our random FB marketeering crap"

What's an "active" user?

[Solandri]

Are they counting people who actually use the service to type and receive personal messages? Or is it like Instagram where it constantly receives feeds from people you don't know in the background? I had to use TitaniumBackup to freeze Instagram because it was sucking up so much battery life, and I only used it once every few weeks to catch up with my sister's family photos.

Re:What's an "active" user?

[cloud.pt]

They are probably counting people forced to see "My Day", aka Stories on top of everything they actually want to use, without the possibility to remove it. I will gladly send 5 bucks (or whatever premium beer costs around where you live as long as you make your case) via PP to anyone that knows a setting that disables it in both Messenge and Facebook for Android (no older version install included, and Facebook employees are also excluded for good measure).

So what is it? Bing, Netscape or Lotus123

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That story claims Facebook is following Microsoft trajectory. The question is where is it in the trajectory? Lotus123 vs Excel or Wordperfect vs Word, Netscape vs Internet Explorer, Google vs Bing ....

Re:So what is it? Bing, Netscape or Lotus123

[Luthair]

Its almost like finding out market analysts opinions about technology are really dumb, who knew.

I'm bored of the Internet as an app delivery tool

[JonnyCalcutta]

Snapgram, instachat, chatomatic, picsnap, instasnap, whatsnapp, snappychat, papchat, snappysnappychatchat, chittychittybangbang, fuckitall-o-matic.

Re:161M probably inflated too

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I heard if u can get a grils snap, she will send you titty pics. Can u get the titties on this insta thing?