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

Published on: February 11, 2019 / Updated on: February 11, 2019 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Facebook may have warned investors it expects revenue growth to slow in its earnings call last week, but that doesn't mean all is ill in the company's social media empire. One reason for the company's warning about slowing revenue growth in the coming quarters is the success of the relatively new Stories format across Facebook's platforms. Launched on Instagram in August 2016, the Stories format was heavily "inspired" by one of Snapchat's most popular features and has gradually made its way to all of Facebook's social media and messaging apps.

All of Facebook's Stories features—Instagram Stories, WhatsApp Status (which could just as easily 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 across social media presents a new challenge for Facebook, as it remains unclear whether the new format can be used as effectively and profitably as the News Feed.

“One of the challenges marketers face is keeping up with where consumers are,” said Chief Executive Sheryl Sandberg in a panel discussion last week. “If you think about our history, people made the switch to mobile before marketers did. And I think one of the successes we’ve had is that we’ve made it easier for advertisers to move into a mobile environment. And just like we did that on mobile, we’re now very focused on doing that in the new things people are doing, and Stories is a big part of that.”

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 earnings 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 are 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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