Instagram has been found to be most popular among users aged under 25 as this demographic spends over half an hour on the app on a daily basis. Users aged 25 and above used the photo-sharing app for an average of 24 minutes per day. Most of the growth in Instagram use is being attributed to the rolling out of the Stories feature a year ago.
The feature allows users to post video clips of their day which then disappear after a period of 24 hours. Instagram Stories was meant to mimic a popular feature on Snapchat by the same name. However, Instagram Stories has become more popular than SnapChat stories having garnered daily users numbering 250 million compared to 166 million for SnapChat.
Monthly growth rate
Besides Stories, Instagram has also copied other SnapChat and this is believed to be the reason for its decline. Other SnapChat features that Instagram has copied include augmented reality filters such as virtual puppy ears. Instagram has also introduced a disappearing-message feature known as Instagram Direct whose members have now grown to 375 million, making it a popular messaging app rivalled only by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and China’s WeChat.
Instagram is also becoming more and more attractive for advertisers. Currently 20% of all Instagram Stories uploaded by business organizations get a reply via Direct Message. This allows Instagram to rope in advertisers who are looking for private channels in their communication with customers. More than half of the businesses that are on Instagram created a clip for Instagram Stories in the last 30 days.
Copycat strategy
The success of Stories has also led to Facebook introducing the feature in its other properties including the main app, Messenger and WhatsApp. On WhatsApp the Stories feature is known as WhatsApp Status and has grown to garner daily users numbering 250 million. Messenger Day and Facebook Stories, the Stories feature on Messenger and Facebook respectively, have however failed to get the same level of popularity.
Instagram Stories’ top location tags are in New York, United States; Sao Paulo, Brazil and Jakarta, Indonesia. The highest-ranked producers of Instagram Stories in the United States are actress Chloe Moretz, model Emily Ratajkowski, YouTube personality Lele Pons, internet star The Fat Jewish and singer J Balvin.
