What's the story?

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That may well be true but it’s probably little comfort to image messaging service Snapchat and its shareholders after Facebook again cloned its ephemeral Stories feature – this time for its flagship service.

The move came roughly eight months after Facebook, which owns Instagram, rolled out Snapchat-like Stories for its photo and video-sharing app. Similar to Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories is a collection of users’ photos and video clips (up to 20 seconds long) which self-destruct aſter 24 hours. All kinds of animated filters and drawing tools can be applied in order to personalise content, and while users can’t ‘like’ Stories, they can reply to them.

So should it really come as that big a surprise Facebook has chosen to release Stories? For Will Conboy, head of paid marketing communications at digital agency Stickyeyes, it was a logical next step. “Given Facebook offers a more rounded, ‘all-in’ social media service than Instagram, of which photos and videos remain central, adding such a universally popular feature just makes sense. Why push users away from one platform when you could satisfy them on both?” Likewise, Random Consulting’s Aideen Shortt suggests this was pretty much inevitable.

“Facebook has never been afraid of trying things out – they’re like Google in that sense – and it’s admirable. Although not everything they do is successful, it would be remiss of [Facebook co-founder] Mark Zuckerberg not to even try to take a bite of [Snapchat co-founder] Evan Spiegel’s lunch.”

It’s not just Instagram and Facebook, though; the California-based behemoth has also recently added Stories-like features to its communications apps, Messenger and WhatsApp. It’s an evolution that has been dubbed the ‘snapchatification’ of Facebook’s stable of mobile services. “When everyone started making jokes online about Facebook’s fourth rollout of Stories, no-one was mentioning Snapchat at all,” says Corey Padveen, a partner at marketing firm t2 International. “At that point, Facebook had accomplished its mission. Facebook’s rollout seems to suggest that they admire what Snapchat created, but are in a way saying, ‘thanks for the great ideas but now let the real business grown-ups handle the monetisation from here’.”

Popularity contest
Since launching last August, Instagram Stories has been a resounding hit, surpassing more than 200 million daily users by April. This is counted as users who post a story or view a friend’s story from the carousel. Quite incredibly, in fewer than eight months Instagram Stories has become more popular than Snapchat itself (as of Q4 2016, Snapchat boasted around 158 million daily users). Instagram has over 600 million users, so to cajole roughly a third of ‘Instagrammers’ into using this feature is no mean feat. Snapchat first introduced Stories back in 2013. Padveen says: “Snapchat had several years to innovate over Facebook and Instagram, and in six months, Instagram caught up, improved the product and developed a better monetisation strategy.”

However, articles appeared online recently suggesting Facebook users appear far less likely to publish a story than those on Instagram, despite it occupying a prominent position atop Facebook users’ news feeds when they fire up the app. This could explain why Facebook quickly introduced greyed-out icons of friends accompanied by ‘so-and-so hasn’t added to his/her story recently’. In most cases, that means they have yet to add anything probably because, let’s face it, creating a story can be a bit of a chore. But while it was done to encourage users to post a story, as well as to fill a barren white space, the move was mocked by one tech journalist who described it as a “sad grey conga line” at the top of the app.

“Facebook has never been afraid of trying things out – they’re like Google in that sense – and it’s admirable” – Aideen Shortt, Random Consulting

Yet it would take a brave individual to bet against Facebook figuring out a way to take Stories mainstream. The social networking juggernaut is closing in on two billion users while one billion people now access the service solely on mobile devices. And at some point brands will be popping up on Stories, which means sponsored content will be “front and centre”, Padveen points out. “That little banner might not seem like much, but that is quite possibly the most valuable real estate in mobile ad media right now,” he explains. “There are millions of people opening their Facebook mobile app every single day looking right at that Stories banner whether they like it or not.

“Buying some of that coveted space and sharing actionable content means that a highly targeted audience of existing players – from an email list a marketer has uploaded to Audiences – or prospects can be reached and activated.” Thus far, gambling operators haven’t exactly dived head first into Stories on Snapchat or Instagram. A few firms such as Paddy Power and Marathonbet have been churning out content, though betting firms will generally struggle somewhat compared with purveyors of visually arresting products like fashion brands, travel operators or car manufacturers. However, the constant news cycle around sport and the opportunity to capitalise on live sporting events allows bookmakers to engage with audiences and add new followers.

Coral, for instance, has been using Snapchat Stories primarily for producing ‘behind-the-scenes’ content at sporting events, and social media community manager Ben Blackmore expects Stories to probably gain good traction on Facebook. “Any sort of content that is different to what followers are seeing on the current channels could be key to making Facebook Stories successful,” he says. “I expect it to be popular with betting operators mainly as most firms have some very large follower counts on the platform so the base audience is already there.”

Furthermore, Stories offers a highly cost-effective, narrative-led medium for brands, Conboy says. “Whilst a single image remains limited in message depth, a collection of images – and occasional videos – frames a more engaging output allowing an extended connection to be made between brand and user. A brand like Paddy Power would find Stories a natural progression; their frequent, highly-unique yet controversial storytelling slots nicely into the feature, especially given they already have a sizeable team deployed in building such content.”

Image is everything
With photo and video now a major mode of communication, clearly Facebook wants a piece of the action and to capitalise on the success Snapchat has enjoyed with Stories. The ace up Snapchat’s sleeve, though, continues to be its user base; the six-year-old app is especially popular with ‘tweens’ and millennials (slightly more than half of UK users are under 25 while 71% are below 45). A big draw among younger audiences has been the wacky filters, allowing users to add animal masks and vomiting rainbows to selfies. Facebook’s huge user base, on the other hand, skews higher.

Snapchat’s core audience is that hardto-reach demographic brands and advertisers covet, which is partly why Snapchat’s owner, Snap Inc., was valued at $24bn when the company floated in March. Spiegel apparently rebuffed Zuckerberg’s reported $3bn offer for the startup in 2013, so Facebook Stories could be Zuckerberg and Co.’s latest attempt to clip Snapchat’s wings.

The fact that Facebook didn’t come up with a different name for Stories certainly raised eyebrows, but bosses don’t seem all too perturbed about being accused of shamelessly ripping off one of Snapchat’s key features. “I can’t imagine they [Facebook] are going to lose any sleep once the Stories concept works,” says Shortt.