A week or so ago, social media enthusiasts were in shock when Instagram rolled out a new feature that looked an awful lot like Snapchats layout. Snapchat allows you to take photos and send them to friends or add them to your “story”, a collection of snaps that disappears after 24 hours. The pictures that you send to friends disappear after a few seconds, unless you elect to replay or take a screen capture of the photo. This feature made the app much different from Instagram. While Instagram users post more pretty, filtered and styled photos, Snapchat allows users to post more candid and real photos, because they know the pictures aren’t sticking around. Now that Instagram introduced its “Stories” feature, everyone seems to be waiting around to see if the app will make Snapchat obsolete.
It’s not really that out of the ordinary. Small niche apps are disappearing left and right. The big players like Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, Pinterest are expanding their capabilities so much that those small platforms are biting the dust even quicker. Now it seems that the goal for the creators of these smaller apps is to be acquired by the giants, as new functionality.
Though it means less diversity in social media options, it’s ultimately good news for you. You can spend less time deciding which social media options are best for you (and the subsequent issue of spending hours figuring out the new features, strategizing and reporting) and can instead focus on the tried and true social media channels that already have everything figured out. This means less time dealing with annoying glitches and technical problems and more time getting quality content to your users.