16 Mar Facebook Taking Functionality from Snapchat: What Brands Need to Know
It has been no secret that ever since Snapchat turned down Facebook’s offer to buy them in 2013 for $3B in cash, Facebook has targeted the social channel head on. In 2016 and 2017 competition has heated between the two platforms as Snapchat prepared for their IPO. This blog post will evaluate the ground that Facebook has gained on newly public Snap, Inc.
Snapchat Stats Update
Since Snap, Inc. has been focused on their IPO, it appears they have lost some ground in terms of their lead in the industry. In August of 2016, Instagram launched stories with a lot of the features of Snapchat.
Since then, Instagram stories (150M users) has been quickly catching up to Snapchat (161M users). Snapchat has been seeing audience growth slowing since stories has been introduced (17% growth between Q1 & Q2 to 3% growth between Q3 & Q4). Influencers are now seeing significantly more traffic on Instagram Stories than on Snapchat. If a brand is thinking about advertising on Snapchat, they may want to rethink the spend. 69% of Snapchat users skip ads on the platform “always” or “often” – a figure that goes up to 80% percent among 18 to 24-year-olds.
Facebook Released Snapchat Clone Within WhatsApp
WhatsApp is turning 8 years old and now has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, with more than 60 billion messages sent per day. The app is revamping their ‘status feature’. The updated feature will enable users to share enhanced photos, GIFs and videos in a Stories-style format – which will also disappear after 24 hours. It looks almost identical to Snapchat—with the ability to use stickers, emojis and being able to write on images. WhatsApp has a larger reach, especially internationally, which puts it ahead of Snapchat in that regard.
Instagram Updates Stories
Instagram added new stickers that were both holiday themed and contextual. The contextual stickers allow you to add drawn overlays that display the time, temperature or your location. Instagram is no longer limiting how much text you can have on an image in your Story. Tapping on the text tool allows you to add multiple chunks of text to your images. You will also no longer have to hold down the screen to record a video. Instagram also improved how stories are saved on your phone—saved in a single video instead of a series of clips. Additionally, Instagram has started testing geostickers in select areas.
Facebook has taken a lot of heat from the Snapchat-like updates it has made to its owned channels, WhatsApp and Instagram. It will be interesting to see how Snapchat will respond to these advances made by Facebook—only time will tell. Need help with creative execution? Contact us!
