Facebook's Apps Dominate Social Media Stories – Facebook's Apps Dominate Social Media Stories

Published on: 11. February 2019 / update from: 11. February 2019 - Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Facebook may have warned investors to slow down sales growth in its profit call last week, but that does not mean that everything is bad in the social media empire. One of the reasons for the warning of the company to slow down sales growth in the upcoming quarters is the success of the relatively new Stories format on the platforms of Facebook. The Stories format introduced in August 2016 was strongly “inspired” by one of the most popular functions of Snapchat and gradually found its way to all social media and messaging applications from Facebook.

All of Facebook's Stories features, i.e. Instagram Stories, WhatsApp Status (which could also be called Stories), and Facebook Stories, have now surpassed Snapchat in terms of daily active users, regardless of who originally came up with the idea. The ongoing shift toward stories at the expense of feeds in social media presents a new challenge for Facebook, as it is unclear whether the new format can be used as effectively as the news feed.

"One of the challenges that have marketers is to keep up where the consumers are," said Managing Director Sheryl Sandberg last week. “If you think of our story, people have made the change to the cell phone before the marketers did. And I think one of the successes we had is that we have made it easier for advertisers to switch to a mobile environment. And just as we did it in the cell phone, we are now very focusing on doing this in the new things that people do, and Stories is a large part of it. ”

Facebook may have warned investors of decelerating revenue growth in its earnings call last week, but that doesn't mean that everything is bad in the company's social media empire. In fact, one of the reasons for the company's warning of slowing revenue growth in coming quarters is the success of the relatively new Stories format across Facebook's platforms. First introduced on Instagram in August 2016, the Stories format was heavily “inspired” by one of Snapchat's most popular features and gradually found its way to all of Facebook's social media and messaging apps.

All of Facebook's stories features, ie Instagram Stories, WhatsApp Status (which might as well have been named Stories too) and Facebook Stories have surpassed Snapchat in terms of daily active users by now, regardless of whose idea it originally was. The ongoing shift towards stories at the expense of feeds in social media poses a new challenge for Facebook because it's unclear whether the new format can be monetized as effectively as the news feed.

“One of the Challenges that Marketers have is keeping up Where Consumers are”, Coo Sheryl Sandberg Said in the Earning Call Last Week. “If you think about Our History, People Made the Shift to Mobile Before Marketers DID. And I Think One of the Successes We've Had Is We Made It Easier for Advertisers To Move Into A Mobile Environment. And just as we did that in mobile, now we very focused on doing that in the new things that people Are doing, and stories is a big part of that. "

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