Instagram Wants in on the Snapchat Craze With New Update
From text, to emoji, painting and more.
Instagram has introduced a new feature called Stories and it’s eerily similar to Snapchat. The photo editing and sharing app introduced the feature with a video (above) and the demonstrations look to be a facsimile of Evan Spigel’s ephemeral photo app: you can add text, emoji and use colorful pencils to edit photos that may be a little too quotidian for your immaculately curated photo-feed. The rollout seems to take on two of Instagram’s most pressing issues: 1. People aren’t sharing as many photos on the app as they used to, probably as a result of said immaculate curation and 2. People really, really like using Snapchat.
This is not the first time the ‘Gram has tapped Snapchat for creative juice: Instagram introduced its own version of the Live Moments tab last October, while Instagram owner, Facebook, has launched two separate self-destructing messaging services in the past. IG’s move toward less permanent moments comes shortly after Snapchat rolled out its Memories feature, which lets Snaps live in the ether, allowing users to access those fleeting photogenic experiences at their say-so.
The Stories features comes bundled with Instagram’s latest update, available now from the App Store. You can learn more about the update and the feature here and watch a video demo above.
