Instagram’s Stories feature for collecting and sharing photos and videos about individual events has reached a new milestone.
The photo service said on Thursday that it has 200 million daily active users, up from 150 million in January. That means that one third of Instagram’s 600 million users now use Stories, which was introduced just over a year ago.
The growth in Stories is a good sign for Instagram in its quest to compete with rival Snapchat. Stories is a near carbon copy of Snapchat’s Stories, which had gained a huge following and threatened Instagram’s grip on users.
Earlier this week, Instagram also updated its messaging service to be more like Snapchat’s with unified ephemeral and direct messaging.
Since Instagram launched Stories last Fall, Snapchat’s user growth rate has declined, which analysts warned about when Snapchat held its high-profile initial public offering in March. According to TechCrunch, in the fourth quarter of 2016, Snapchat grew its users base by 3%, which is less than the 7% growth in the third quarter of 2016.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, also debuted a new tools, as it looks to compete with messaging and social app rival Snapchat (SNAP). Instagram (FB) users can now create a selfie sticker—which is a sticker of a camera selfie— that its users can pin on photos or videos.
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Users will also now be able to place stickers, text, or emojis in videos as well.
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In addition, Instagram is debuting new cities for “geostickers,” which are graphics that users can place on photos or videos that indicate what city they are posting from. The feature is expected to roll out in the next few days for Chicago, London, Madrid, and Tokyo.
