I wonder if Snap's strategy here was built around a false dichotomy. As noted in the article, Snap's expressed strategy is to focus on your closest friends, no

I wonder if Snap's strategy here was built around a false dichotomy. As noted in the article, Snap's expressed strategy is to focus on your closest friends, not "influencers". But their user growth leveled off when Instagram cloned them. I noticed a swift migration even among my friends from Snapchat to Instagram. These were experienced Snapchat users, and they migrated mostly to Instagram because they reach more friends there. They are not "influencers", but they do care about reaching all their friends with their stories, and Instagram has a larger network. It seems to me a lot of regular people do actually care about reaching a few hundred "friends" with their stories, not just their closest.