I agree, seems to be a lot of anger/hate on the developer side of things, but it's a smart move on IG's side from a user and business strategy perspective. I w

I agree, seems to be a lot of anger/hate on the developer side of things, but it's a smart move on IG's side from a user and business strategy perspective. I was having a similar discussion with someone else on a duplicate of this post, so thought I'd share some of my thoughts here as well since they're especially relevant to your comment. The general point of the prior discussion was that IG was simply cloning SC, and might do better by releasing it as a separate app vs inside their main app. But by releasing it within their main app will result in certain failure since SC's crowd of tweens/millennials wouldn't leave SC. [my responses with minor edits] I disagree, I think integrating it with their main product is the perfect way to release this. Just look at Periscope ( and Vine ) living as separate products from Twitter, vs FB releasing FB Live deeply embedded into their primary product. The likelihood of the mainstream user's willingness to try out and adopt the new product/feature is increased. And in this case, I think all the additional features that comes with IG Stories is actually very cohesive with the rest of IG's core experience. All the new stickers, overlays, filters, and I'm sure they'll be adding the same animated video filters are all very natural extensions of the IG user experience. So many people use Snapchat as a photo/filter editor to then share on IG/Twitter/FB, now they can do that very same experience directly in IG and share it with their existing fans. And maybe an overlooked aspect is IG's better UX vs snapchat's bizarre stubbornness to maintain their user antagonistic UX. But I think it's just as telling with SC's recent spate of features that are moving away from the ephemeral nature of the app ( ie Memories ). Where you can store or save Snaps or Stories.... oh you mean sort of like a personal gallery? And now you want to view a collection of the latest/most popular collected snaps from your friends? oh you mean like a newsfeed? Bottom line is that the photo/messaging apps are converging. And I don't think there's necessarily any loyalty to a particular platform especially if they have very similar features. The crowd will move to the platform where their friends are, and where the celebs/bloggers/artists/influencers are. And IMO I think IG has a slight advantage with that group at this point because of the non-ephemeral nature of their app which led/leads more naturally to those types building their 'brand' and following. Nobody wants to spend hours and energy creating content that simply disappears. But these types have followed the crowd onto SC and lived by the SC rules, but I'd have to believe they would prefer the other model if they had a choice. So I guess what I'm saying is that these 2 apps are converging to the same point, albeit from different ends of the spectrum with differing pressures. And once they reach a certain level of parity, loyalty to a platform goes out the window, and being able to capture the cool kids and influencers will be the key to where the rest of the crowd goes. So I don't think it's 'certain failure' from IG's point of view, and certainly still anyone's game.