Instagram Stories are here, and you may not be that excited for them because they kind of already existed on Snapchat as Snapchat Stories. Just like Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories allow users to create video and photo slideshows that disappear after 24 hours. And again much like Snapchat, users can add emojis, text and even drawings to the images in their stories. It’s a blatant copy and paste from Snapchat to Instagram, which Instagram’s Kevin Systrom freely admits. That doesn’t really matter though, especially when you consider the implications for marketers.

Stories on Brand-Friendly Platform

Social platforms are pretty incestuous by their very nature. No one owns a feature. Instead each platform looks at what’s working elsewhere and asks if that functionality would work for it as well. That’s what happened with Instagram Stories, but that could be good news for marketers.

Instagram Stories offers Snapchat functionality with a platform that is very invested in building brand relationships. Facebook (and Instagram) is notoriously brand-friendly. Snapchat’s still finding its way in this area. But beyond that, Instagram has a massive and active user base that understands brands are on the platform and expect brands to message them there. Instagram is a natural place for brand content to be, which is less true on Snapchat, which by it’s very nature, is a messaging platform for communication between friends, even though Snapchat is working to change that.

Snapchat and Instagram have their pros and cons. Snapchat’s functionality has been both its strength and its weakness. It’s been embraced by a growing and incredibly loyal user base, but at the same time, the less-than-intuitive UI has kept some users at bay. Instagram Stories takes some of that functionality to a platform more people simply get, while helping Instagram overcome some of its challenges, such as the feeling to create perfected content. The ephemeral nature of Instagram Stories gives users permission to be less polished. That may be enough to keep existing users from exploring outside of Instagram and defecting to platforms like Snapchat.

Thanks for Being a Copycat, I Guess...

Snapchat’s not for everyone, and it’s not for every brand (yet), but Instagram’s more mass appeal means Instagram Stories is an opportunity for almost every brand to experiment with. It gives brands the opportunity to be less polished in the content they share, tell more complete stories than can be told in a single post and experiment with functionality that still has a degree of novelty and, in turn, user attention.

It’s good when platforms see what’s working elsewhere and attempts to figure out how it can work elsewhere. Facebook’s had a series of experiments to compete with Snapchat. All of which have failed. This feels natural. It makes sense and it adds a bit of ephemeral imperfection to an otherwise perfect curation of one’s personal image. So thanks for copying Snapchat, Instagram.