Last year, Snapchat introduced an archive feature called Memories. It was only a matter of time before Instagram took the concept and made it its own. That time has come. Earlier this month, Instagram announced that it will also create Stories Archive, a private archive of users’ stories, so that users’ can revisit their stories after the 24-hour viewing period expires.
While Instagram is guilty of taking many of Snapchat’s key features outright, Instagram expanded on Snapchat’s original idea of storing stories for later viewing by adding the capability to share these stored Stories. Over the last year, Stories has taken over Instagram in a way the company couldn’t ignore. While users still post videos and photos, they have gravitated toward Stories.
To get around the fact that Stories disappear after 24 hours, a significant number of users would download their Stories to their devices. These users would often either run out of storage space or forget to download their Stories, which would prompt them to call Instagram to complain that they lost a Story they wanted to keep.
In addition to private storage, Instragram has introduced Instagram Stories Highlights, which allows users to share those archived Stories in a special section at the top of their profile. The stories, like photos and videos, will stay on a user’s profile until they are removed. Stories Highlights also allows users to package multiple Stories together, pick a cover photo, give it a name, and post the expanded Story to their profiles.
Instagram hopes the Stories Archive will make Instagram profiles more representative of each user’s life because the proliferation of Stories, which disappear, has made users’ profiles less representative of their lives. By allowing Stories to remain indefinitely, Instagram hopes users will opt to leave Stories available to their friends and will spend time adding stickers and filters to Stories.
Because Instagram has been successful in its multiple attempts to claim some of Snapchat’s territory, Stories Archives and Stories Highlights will most likely be successful, since the new features somehow sets themselves apart by being almost exactly the same as what Snapchat offers.
