Snapchat Is Doomed, Instagram Stories Has Won Over Younger Users And Marketers

For years, Facebook struggled to pull users that belong in the younger demographic away from Snapchat, which was rising steadily in popularity. Then came Instagram Stories, an unabashed clone of the social media app that Facebook was trying to beat. Fast-forward a year later and the results are clear. Instagram Stories has won and Snapchat is in a world of trouble.

Facebook’s photo-sharing property has long since surpassed Snapchat when it comes to the number of daily users and it has only grown since. At 250 million Instagram Stories has a huge edge over the original, with users spending an average of 30 minutes on the app compared to Snapchat, Tech Crunch reports.

As expected, this produced a rather unfortunate effect on Snapchat’s stocks, which now stand at $12.67 per share compared to the previous $17. User growth for the app has slowed as well. Quarterly growth used to be 17.2 percent. Now, it stands at a mere five percent per quarter.

At this point, there’s no denying that Snapchat’s prospects are looking grim. It’s IPO was supposed to be one of the biggest introduced in the tech industry in years. Now, Snap Inc. is looking severely overvalued.

Users are not the only ones who are favoring Instagram Stories either. Marketers are starting to see that Snapchat is on a nosedive trajectory, Business Insider reports, which means that the Facebook-owned option is going to be the main attraction for clients in the future. Mediassociates SVP Ben Kunz told the publication as much when he revealed that businesses are expressing increased interest in putting ads on Instagram Stories.

"We have clients proactively asking us to do more on Instagram Stories every week," Kunz said. "I can’t recall a similar conversation related to Snapchat."

The same thing is happening with other marketers and other corporations. The results are clear. The clone has won against the original.