Instagram Stories? No. Just no.

Picture the scene. It’s May 2016 and an early morning meeting has been called inside Instagram’s San Francisco Headquarters. “So, how do we compete with Snapchat?” 

It defies belief that the actual, genuine conclusion to this meeting was, quite simply, “you know what? Let’s just copy them!”

Instagram Stories? No. Just no.

Okay, so my initial reaction to this move was somewhat optimistic; choosing to rejoice in the fact that this meant my prolonged avoidance of Snapchat might finally be paying off. Why bother having an account on two apps which are practically the same? 

Although, depressingly, this was already one of my many arguments for not joining Snapchat in the first place – I already have Instagram, which isn’t much different. 

Another of my arguments was that, as a man in his mid-twenties, I don’t want to join any apps that I’ll have to spend significant periods of time learning how to use. 

I mean, we all know how painful it is when an elderly relative joins Facebook and clearly has no idea what they’re doing. But now my beloved Instagram is willing to teach me. What excuse will I have left?!

In other news, it’s come to light how little creativity the big social networks actually possess. 

Flashback to 2008 when Bebo, in a last, desperate bid to prevent their imminent redundancy, chose to copy Facebook’s ‘like’ button in a bid to slam-shut-and-bolt the exit for their rapidly fleeing customers. 

Return to Bebo a year later and they were almost an exact copy of Facebook. 

It turns out if you can’t beat them, you just copy them. 

You’d think, logically, social networks should focus on what makes them unique, and what therefore attracted customers in the first place. Instagram’s latest move appears to already be backfiring, after users have begun using the new Story feature as an ideal opportunity to promote their Snapchat accounts. 

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have long been the trio of apps where I spend most of my spare time, and I’ve always felt that they complement each other nicely. 

All three offer something unique and different – ignoring Twitter’s recent introduction of a ‘like’ button to replace the user’s previous ability to ‘favourite’ tweets. 

But what actually happens if the main social networks stop trying to compete with each other, and instead simply morph into one another? The world was already crazy. Come on, guys, please don’t make it any crazier.