Snapchat stories feature spreads to multiple platforms

Ever since the social media app “Snapchat” came up with the popular “story” feature on the app, similar social media applications have been catching up. Snapchat is one of the most popular social media applications alone, with over 800 million active users since 2016, where users can send up to 10 seconds worth of photos to their friends. For the ones who are not familiar with the concept, a Snapchat story is a photo or a video that users can post in which they may decorate with stickers, emojis, doodles and more. A user’s friends or anyone who adds them may view their stories.

Users can make their stories as long as they wish to be. With Snapchat’s recent updates, users have the ability to swipe up and view saved photos and videos on a slot called “memories.” “I like that Snapchat has been more commercialized over time,” freshman Karina Carcamo said.

These “stories” have been taking over Snapchat, and social media over all. Various social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp have been almost “copying” the idea of the “stories” option that Snapchat created. The youth are the main target audience towards these platforms. Snapchat is mainly used by younger people.

Now, Instagram has the story option at the top of the home screen, where users can post a 10 second story planting certain stickers, doodles and captions on their photos or videosd, along with other options such as putting their location, date or time on their story.

“I enjoy how Instagram has the stories feature, similar to Snapchat. It’s entertaining,” sophomore Kira Skidmore said.

These large social media companies are purposely taking what is the new wave of technological advancements and applying them to their own apps in a creative way. However, some do not find this appealing. “I don’t enjoy how Instagram and other social media’s are copying Snapchat. They’re all becoming the same,” Karina Carcamo said.

Disregarding the “stories” feature, Instagram recently came out with a live stream option, where users can go live for a specific amount of time and stream on the app where their followers may watch them. Viewers can comment, like the livestream and either view the stream to the end or leave at their leisure. Shortly after, Facebook came out with the same ‘live’ feature.

This has been an extremely popular feature for social media fanatics all around the world. Snapchat stories are a bright and colorful way of sharing your daily activities, interests or just your “artsy” meals that are just picture-perfect. Happy snapping!