While Snapchat might have created the Stories feature, it’s safe to say that Instagram helped make it even more popular than ever, but it seems that there was a point in time where Instagram might not have even launched the feature. This is according to a report from Bloomberg (via Engadget) that shared the details of the feature’s creation.
According to the report, Instagram’s founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger had initially refused to build a lookalike feature, at least not until Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg “personally requested” for it. The report claims that Zuckerberg was worried that if they did not do something to change up the way Instagram is used, they might miss out on an entire generation of users.
It might sound a bit “bad” because it seems as though Instagram was almost pressured to do it, but according to a spokeswoman, Instagram was “initiated and drove the creation of Stories internally and was not pressured.” Systrom did state that there was initial tension over the direction of Instagram, although he is now grateful for how it all turned out.
Since then we’ve seen Instagram borrow other features from Snapchat, although to be fair they have been coming up with features of their own as well, such as the recently launched Instagram “Focus” function.