August 11, 2016

Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat Stories: Which One is Better?

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I go to Disney World at least once a year, and during that time, I love to share my experience on social media with whoever couldn’t join me. Snapchat is usually my go-to because it’s easy to use and always has fun stickers and geofilters. On my most recent Disney vacation, I tested the new Instagram Stories to share my memories with friends near and far. Let’s just say I’m not abandoning Snapchat anytime soon. Keep reading to find out why.

instagram-stories-2I started off by sharing a simple picture with my followers of the plane right before takeoff. It took me a while to find where to post a picture to Instagram Stories, but eventually I found the small icon in the top left corner of the homepage. I was a little surprised to find there weren’t many editing options. There were four color filter options, including the option to make the picture black & white or give it vintage tint. I kept it simple with just white text, which I was able to place anywhere I wanted on the photo. I did like that the text was automatically white, unlike Snapchat where your first option is the gray text bar.
It wouldn’t be a successful trip to Disney if I didn’t share a photo of Cinderella’s Castle. I wanted to give this picture some sparkle so I wrote the word “magic” with the glow marker. It was a little difficult to write, but Snapchat’s drawing feature isn’t that easy to navigate either. However, Snapchat at least gives me the option to add emojis and stickers to hide my poor drawing skills.
When it came time to see who viewed my story it was very simple. All I had to do was click on my profile picture at the top of the screen – voila! Here, I could delete a post or even delete someone who had viewed it (not sure the reasoning behind this feature), which isn’t instagram-stories-3something Snapchat offers. You can also save any photo or video you post (just like Snapchat).
Instagram Stories has promise, especially since most of us have more followers on Instagram than Snapchat, so more people could potentially view your ephemeral pictures. But at the end of the day, I’m going to continue using Snapchat, which has more photo editing options. Snapchat was built for this type of photo sharing and the app has come close to perfecting it by making it easily accessible and fun to use. I mean, who doesn’t love the daily filter updates?! But, since Instagram Stories is fairly new, I’m hoping they’re testing out the application and will add more features in the future. Maybe I’ll reconsider then.image5

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