In today's social media world, Snapchat and Instagram have gained a big popularity within a very short time, especially amongst youngsters.

1. Is Snapchat More Popular than Instagram?
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

2. 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:- Instagram
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.

3. To get a broader view, we have compared both popular image and
video sharing apps as illustrated below:
Instagram Vs Snapchat:
Instagram:-
1. Allows content cross promotion with Facebook Integration
2. Users can view photos and videos sent from their contacts even
years after they were shared.
3. Provides many filters for modifying images easily and quickly.
Generally, images are of higher 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.
5. Covers a wider age group, primarily young people evenly
distributed in both genders.
6. Allows users to upload photos directly from their camera roll
outside the app.
7. Videos are 15 seconds long. Also, users can upload videos from
their phone’s library.
8. No time setting allowed for images and videos. It can be viewed
for years.
9. Allows users to add a comment directly to the bottom of an
image or video.
10. Allows prolonged conversations for users engagement.
Permits 15-persons limit on group messages for sending images
and videos directly to other users.
11. Within the app users can like an image by double clicking on

4. heart shape icon.
12. Shows continuous feed of all the images and videos shared
by the users followed by you.
13. ‘Instagram ads API’ allows effective ads feed posting as
sponsored advt.
14. Images or videos gets automatically saved to the user’s
photo gallery.
15. Users can block other users sharing inappropriate images or
videos. Also, allows users to report their Instagram contacts.
Snapchat:-
1. Snapchat allows timing as a core and helps to create a sense of
urgency among users to view an image or video.
2. 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. 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. No such features are provided.
5. Showing faster popularity and higher levels of engagement
among teens and women.
6. Not provided with image upload feature from a gallery.
7. Videos can run only for 10 seconds. Can’t upload video from
phone library.
8. Allows users to set a timer for their images or videos to be

5. 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 text line to their images and videos.
10. 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. No such feature exists.
12. 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. No such feature exists.
14. Just after taking the picture, a user can save this by simply
clicking on the ‘download’ icon in the lower left-hand corner.
15. 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

6. 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.

7. 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 or email at- contact@brihaspatitech.com.