Is Snapchat more popular than Instagram?
Published on August 16, 2016 • Updated on December 9, 2023 • 
9 min Read Introduction
Worldwide, social media dependence is a reality for most of the smartphone users. Mostly young and middle age people can be seen flicking through their favorite social media platform.
In today’s world of social media, there are so many social media platforms inventing daily, you may not even have heard the names of many. Some have gained huge popularity like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest, on the basis of daily users reach.
More than a decade has been passed since the origin of Facebook and Twitter and both of these platforms have maintained top positions on the social media popularity scale. But Instagram and Snapchat have gained huge popularity within a very short period especially among youngsters between the age group of 13-35 years.
Now, before proceeding further to make any conclusion to answer this question- Is Snapchat more popular than Instagram?
Let’s first go through the history of both of these popular image and video sharing platforms.
History
The name ‘Instagram’ brings its name with ‘instant camera’ and ‘telegram’. It was originated in San Francisco in October 2010. In a stepwise manner, Instagram has introduced many features in its apps like tagging, hashtags, filters, photo frames, and borders. In April 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram by paying a huge amount of $1 billion. Since its launch, Instagram has been expanding its wings of popularity with more than 300 million monthly active users and more than 70 million photos are shared every day. Instagram is especially popular to share real-time images like trips, children, food, pets, fashion etc. Currently, this photo sharing platform is especially popular for frequently sharing gossips, scandals, and images of many celebrities.
Snapchat
This popular app has gained its name ‘Snaps’ from photos and video clips used for ‘chatting’. In September 2011, this messaging app was launched by three students from Stanford University.
Its basic features allow users to send images and video recordings directly to their contacts lists. But there is a twist that gained huge popularity to Snapchat, that is all images or videos once viewed by the mobile recipient are erased automatically. This app is especially popular among young users, to send selfies, video clips, and story-telling. In the past five years since its launching, Snapchat has gained a base of over 100 million active users and approx 400 million sharing every day.
To get a broader view, we have compared both popular image and video sharing apps as illustrated below:
Instagram Vs Snapchat:
| SNo | Snapchat | |
| 1 | Allows content cross promotion with Facebook Integration | Snapchat allows timing as a core and helps to create a sense of urgency among users to view an image or video. |
| 2. | Users can view photos and videos sent from their contacts even years after they were shared. | Allows sharing of real time pictures and videos more freely. Delivers more privacy as the content gets automatically erased within 10 seconds after being viewed. |
| 3. | Provides many filters for modifying images easily and quickly. Generally, images are of higher quality. | No filters available to modify images but allows users to add personal drawings or notes to their images and videos before sharing. Usually, Images are comparatively of lower quality. |
| 4. | Allows users to easily follow, comment and like their friend’s and family images. Also, hashtags allow users to easily find respective images and videos. | No such features are provided. |
| 5. | Covers a wider age group, primarily young people evenly distributed in both genders. | Showing faster popularity and higher levels of engagement among teens and women. |
| 6. | Allows users to upload photos directly from their camera roll outside the app. | Not provided with image upload feature from a gallery. |
| 7. | Videos are 15 seconds long. Also, users can upload videos from their phone’s library. | Videos can run only for 10 seconds. Can’t upload video from phone library. |
| 8. | No time setting allowed for images and videos. It can be viewed for years. | Allows users to set a timer for their images or videos to be shared with contacts. It can be 1-10 sec for a specific contact group or can be shared publicly for 24 hours with an unlimited number of views. |
| 9. | Allows users to add a comment directly to the bottom of an image or video. | Allows users to add a text line to their images and videos. |
| 10 | Allows prolonged conversations for users engagement. Permits 15-persons limit on group messages for sending images and videos directly to other users. | Although Snapchat does not have any limit to send images to users. But prolonged conversations are not possible as images disappear just after a user view it. |
| 11. | Within the app users can like an image by double clicking on heart shape icon. | No such feature exists. |
| 12. | Shows continuous feed of all the images and videos shared by the users followed by you. | With a new Storytelling feature Image or video content can be shown as waiting that can not be shared with a contact as a personal snap. |
| 13. | ‘Instagram ads API’ allows effective ads feed posting as sponsored advt. | No such feature exists. |
| 14. | Images or videos gets automatically saved to the user’s photo gallery. | Just after taking the picture, a user can save this by simply clicking on the ‘download’ icon in the lower left-hand corner. |
| 15. | Users can block other users sharing inappropriate images or videos. Also, allows users to report their Instagram contacts. | Provides a feature for blocking a sender. |
Furthermore, both Instagram and Snapchat are kept on improving their apps by updating with many new features. Recently, new stories update from Instagram has created a buzz in social media world and people are now asking:
“Is Instagram’s new stories update copied from Snapchat?”
We have analyzed this latest ‘Storytelling’ feature from Instagram and shared its ‘Similarities’ and ‘Dissimilarities’ vs Snapchat to make you decide yourself what is the truth.
Similarities:
Recently Instagram has introduced its latest feature update i.e. Instagram Stories- It sounds like Snapchat’s popular Storytelling feature.
- Instagram Stories allows users to post as many images and videos as they want at a time.
- Shared content can be viewed in a slideshow.
- On comparing Snapchat vs Instagram filters, both allow their users to personalize image or video with filters, drawing tools, and text.
- All image or video stories get disappeared after 24 hours to avoid any ‘overposting’.
- Allows users to edit their image or video content, share multiple images and videos at the same time just like a story.
Differences:
The major differences between these two popular platforms involve saving, adding content and photo customization like:
- A user cannot save a full day’s Instagram Story like on Snapchat, still, they can post slides from their story to their permanent Instagram feed.
- In contrast to Snapchat, old content cannot be added to Instagram Stories unless it is re-imported or there is a screenshot.
- Instagram Stories does not have native selfie lens filters, 3D stickers, location filters and speed effects, for images.
- Instagram Stories offers three different brush options while Snapchat currently offers one.
Latest reports say that Snapchat is more popular among women, unlike Instagram as it is evenly popular in both genders. When it comes to Advertising and Marketing, Instagram is the king. It allows advertisers to reach a wider users base. Snapchat is just a baby as compared to Instagram web-driving ads. This is the reason, most of the popular brands are now increasingly showing interest in Instagram as an ad platform.
But, a group of young people especially teens prefer Snapchat over Instagram for sharing their fun moments and happiness with their near & dears. Moreover, as per the latest reports about Instagram- it is slowly but surely going to get cluttered with ads.
So, which social media platform you would like to install on your smartphone?
Instagram or Snapchat?
Please share your favorite choice with some valid reasons for reaching us.
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