(Republished from my Twitter feed today) 1/ Instagram competing with on Stories will be a fascinating lens through which to analyze the impact of network effects at scale Snapchat 2/ Existing engaged Snapchat users with large built-in networks will likely not gravitate over to Instagram immediately 3/ However, Insta users who aren’t on Snapchat or who are new to Snapchat (like me) will see far greater engagement on Instagram 4/ The social validation that occurs (e.g. # of views) on a is an important motivator for user engagement Story 5/ It’s also a big hassle for Insta users to constantly open a wide variety of other social apps (“app fatigue”) 6/ As more Insta users become Stories users, the argument becomes more compelling for Snapchat-first users to try Insta Stories 7/ I think Instagram *nailed* the stories feature, making the argument for Insta stories even more compelling 8/ However, Snapchat is much better optimized for spontaneity and high content volume; the app opens right into the camera 9/ Instagram has a culture of manicured photos, which it needs to fight to build a Snapchat-quality Stories network 10/ I’m curious to see who wins the Stories fight; I think this will be a battle royale
