Snapchat started out as person to person app but at some point decided they will become person to world app (via snapchat stories), and it was doing well, to th

Snapchat started out as person to person app but at some point decided they will become person to world app (via snapchat stories), and it was doing well, to the point where most users use the stories feature more than the 1:1 feature. Then came Instagram and ate their lunch. Now they can't go back because they have already IPO'd with the ad-driven business model (instead of somehow capitalizing on the ephemeral nature of the medium, which would have been much harder for FB/Instagram to copy). So yeah, this is why people keep comparing these two.