Instagram. The most downloaded app in the world with over 1 billion users, is constantly challenging other social media outlets. Instagrams first rival in the game, Snapchat. It wasn’t until October 2013, when Snapchat launched one of its popular features called “Stories”. A feature which allows users to post a picture or video that can be viewed by all their friends on the app. The feature was a hit. About three years later in August of 2016, Instagram made it known it was set out to be the best and launched their story feature, challenging Snapchat. In 2018, two years after the launching of Instagram's Stories, it was reported that, “more than 400 million people use the popular feature each day [stories], up from 250 million one year ago. That makes Stories more than twice as popular as Snapchat, which saw 191 million active users in the last quarter” (CNN Business). This statistic shows that instagram’s stories are more popular than Snapchat’s and will be successful at what they put out.
Fast forward to now, Instagram is still finding ways to compete with the next-best-app. Instagram launched an extension on its app called Reels, Which is a direct competitor of the app, Tik Tok. Tik Tok allows users to post short music videos, while Reels, does the exact same. Many people think Reels was launched as a take over for Tik Tok since there have been talks about the Chinese-made-app getting banned from the United States. Even so, this is another example of Instagram seizing an opportunity to be a powerhouse app. Although Reels was only launched a little over a week ago in the US, it will be no surprise if Reels is as successful as its competitor, Tik Tok. But as we know, History does in-fact repeat itself. Watch out, it truly is Instagram Vs. The World!
