Instagram Stories crushes Snapchat with 250 million daily active users
Instagram’s main competitor Snap has 166 million daily active users, as of its last earnings report in May
By Michelle Castillo
Instagram Stories is now at 250 million daily active users, vastly surpassing Snapchat’s rate according to Facebook’s global head of sales Carolyn Everson.
“If you think about it a year ago when we sat together, Instagram Stories didn’t exist,” Everson told CNBC. “Today on the platform, we not only have 250 million people using it, but actually a third (of the most viewed stories) are businesses using Instagram Stories and one million are advertisers.”
Instagram added Stories in August 2016, which allows users to post disappearing stories for a 24-hour period eerily similar to Snapchat’s capabilities. By January, the feature had 150 million daily active users.
“Our user growth for stories is actually coming at the explosive growth for Instagram overall,” Everson said. “Instagram is now at 700 million people globally.”
Stories first reported passing Snapchat in April, when it announced it had 200 million daily active users.
Snap said its platform has 166 million daily active users during its last earnings report in May. Snap shares declined about three per cent after the new Instagram Stories daily active user numbers were announced.
Everson dismissed the copycat allegations, saying Facebook invented the Feed format which Instagram and other competitors current utilise. People and businesses like the Stories format, she said.
“We think Stories is also another format that not only consumers but advertisers use,” she said. “You are going to see Stories in a lot of different platforms.”
- Reporting by Sally Shin and Julia Boorstin.
