Facebook spent a whopping 1 billion dollars in 2012 to buy Instagram. Everybody thought that it was a ridiculous or more of a crazy idea to pay such an astronomical amount for a social media platform with just 30 million users. At that point in time, Facebook was not a robust mobile platform. Instagram helped them to instantaneously boost their performance in a particular area. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook assured that he would keep the two popular social media platforms separate and independent. He did not consider integrating Instagram and Facebook together. After almost 7 years, there is enough reason to believe that Instagram’s independent status is instrumental in letting it forge a way ahead of Facebook.
Instagram Would Enjoy Much Better Future
As per the findings of Edison research, the usage or popularity of Facebook has, at last, declined to a certain extent. We understand that with the decline in Facebook activity, we are witnessing the boost in Instagram activity and interaction. Many people have determined that Facebook activity is consistently going down. On the contrary, Instagram activity is growing by the day. It has been forecasted that By 2020 Instagram usage would overtake Facebook. Instagram would be the most used social media platform in the United States. Let us explore a few reasons.
Stories are the future of social media:
I did not say it, but Mark Zuckerberg did in the fourth-quarter profit approach on January 31st, 2018.
“We expect Stories are on track to overwhelm posts and feeds as the most common way that people share across all social apps.”
Zuckerberg even shared that Stories affects “how [Facebook and Instagram] build product and think about [their] business.”
“That is because Stories is a superior format for sharing multiple video clips consistently. The development of Stories will affect how we fabricate items and consider our business, including WhatsApp and Instagram, which are the No. 1 and No. 2 most-utilized Stories items on the planet.”
In November 2017, Instagram reported that the Instagram feature had 300 million daily active Stories users around the world, up from 200 million global DAU in April. Instagram is affecting website traffic. Instagram Stories have progressed toward becoming traffic drivers for brands and influencers.
Prior this year, National Geographic has started using links in Stories to promote its email newsletters.
As a feature of its work with the National Audubon Society to raise people’s awareness of bird conservation, National Geographic has requested that its Story viewers subscribe to the Year of the Bird email newsletter.
Instagram Is Much Effective than Facebook among Young Audiences
Studies have revealed that there would be a definite boost in the usage of Snapchat and Instagram in the United States in users belonging to the age group of 12 to 34 years. We have already witnessed a dramatic decline in the use of Facebook in the same age group during 2017 and 2018. Once this data became public, Snapchat went through a redesign which led to a $1.3 billion decline in valuation in response to Kylie Jenner’s tweet.
Instagram Is Certainly More Mobile-Friendly
Instagram was supposed to be a mobile-only platform for several years. Moreover, there were fewer kinds of content for sharing and viewing. Instagram’s user experience has certainly left the Facebook way behind. Instagram’s UI has beaten Facebook ultimately. Instagram was created precisely for the mobile phone while Facebook got adapted to it. If statistics were to be believed 80 percent of all social content is generally consumed on specific mobile devices. Hence Instagram stays way ahead of the others because of its structural advantage. You could now easily buy real Instagram likes from a reputed digital marketing agency.
Instagram Is Way Better for Businesses & Brands
Facebook has been continuously altering their algorithms for improving what users could see on the News Feeds. This implies that brands would be struggling harder for achieving organic reach. The social media circuit increasingly became quite challenging for effectively connecting with followers and building robust relationships.
Instagram Is Opening Up To Developers
As Facebook develops progressively mindful about developer ecosystem and data usage due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and similar transgressions, it’s simultaneously embracing MORE developer engagement over at Instagram. This duality is fascinating and indicates that Facebook continues to be quite serious about keeping Instagram as an absolutely detached community
Just recently, the organization reported that users will be able to use third-party camera effects and stickers. And in a nod to Instagram’s present and future role as users’ preferred social network, they will enable users to share stories to Instagram from other applications, such as Spotify, GoPro, and others.
This is also fascinating, as it sets up Instagram stories as the de-facto, highly flexible repository of users, real-time experiences, even if those experiences were initially captured outside of the Instagram application. Facebook is still a behemoth and is the only social network that approaches ubiquity.
In any case, Instagram is transforming into a BETTER social network, in my estimation. If that continues, it’s entirely possible that Instagram becomes more popular than Facebook by 2020, at least among users in the United States.
Conclusion
Instagram has gone through several modifications in their display algorithms and Instagram seems to be less detrimental to brands. Several brands boast of happy coexistence between brands and users. Instagram has managed to make necessary modifications directly on its display algorithm. It is not at all detrimental for brands culminating in a pleasant co-existence between users and brands. Instagram is surely the way to go in 2019.
