Snapchat and Instagram’s battle is one drawn out duet of “Anything You Can Do,” and at this point, some of their features are so similar it’s hard to say who truly does it better.
According to Mashable Instagram’s new features will make Stories bigger than ever! The company introduced two new types of Stories: Location Stories and Hashtag Stories. How many stories are too many stories? The limit indeed doesn’t exist.
Users are now able to search for any city, town, landmark, restaurant or local business and see what is happening in their Story. The feature pulls stories from Instagram users through location stickers and compiles them into one story, and users are alerted if their image is included in a story. ICYMI- this is EXACTLY like Snapchat “Our Stories” feature which rolled out at the end of March.
This feature is a literal dream for those Friday nights where all you want to do is sleep and watch reruns of The Office, but your friends are text-yelling Drake lyrics at you-YOLO. Location Stories will solve this problem as you can simply search the destination (bar) you plan on going to and see if it’s going to be worth your time. FOMO- cured.
Hashtag stories, which will launch “over the coming weeks,” and will pull from anyone who posts a photo or video with a hashtag to their Story. Both new features are personalized to each user based on their interests and habits, whereas Snapchat’s features rely on human editors.
Because it’s 2017, it was just a matter of hours until Snapchat clapped back with a new update of their own. Snapchat launched Custom Stories that lets you create stories for groups of friends and family. Users can also create custom stories for particular friends or contact within a geofenced area.
The update, which is ideal for events and special occasions is a perfect tool for connecting people and sharing memories over a span of time. Custom stories operate similarly to conventional stories but will disappear if no one adds an update for 24 hours. Users can create up to three custom Stories of their own but can participate in an unlimited number of those created by others.
For those of you in wedding season, this new feature most likely means that you will not only have the task of hashtagging the wedding on Instagram, but you are now also responsible for documenting your time on their custom story. What’s the point of a marriage photographer anymore?
