Instagram Stories is a remarkably successful one-year-old

When Instagram Stories launched back in August 2016, the world just couldn’t help but chastise Facebook for copying Snapchat’s business model.

But 12 months on, a quarter-of-a-billion users later, and yet another possible Facebook revenue stream, it looks to be one of the best digital business decisions made this decade.

Snapchat isn’t exactly a minnow though. The ephemeral messaging app still boasts an admirable userbase of around 166-million. But it isn’t growing nearly as quickly as Facebook’s version. Instagram Stories has rocketed to 250-million daily users in a year.

In celebrating its birthday, Instagram also shed some more revealing light on Stories’ achievements.

Instagram Stories is now used by 250m people daily – nearly double Snapchat’s user base

“Stories has also helped increase the amount of time people spend on Instagram,” the company announces in a blog post.

“Those under the age of 25 spend more than 32 minutes a day on Instagram, on average, while those age 25 and older spend more than 24 minutes a day.”

The company also announced that “over 50%” of businesses that use Instagram have used Instagram Stories to peacock their product or service.

“One in five organic stories from businesses gets a direct message,” the company adds, which is a remarkable statistic.

Instagram Stories and its wide social footprint

Other stats, interestingly, display just how widespread Instagram Stories’ user base is.

The top location tag belongs to Indonesian capital Jakarta, with Sao Paulo, Brazil; New York; London; and Madrid, Spain rounding out the top five. More impressively, that makes it five cities from four different continents.

As far as hashtags go, a Portuguese word #bomdia features — meaning hello or good day in the language. This also suggests the notable impact Stories has had in Brazil.

Here are the top 10 most used hashtags on Instagram Stories:

1. #GOODMORNING
2. #WORK
3. #GOODNIGHT
4. #MOOD
5. #HAPPYBIRTHDAY
6. #TBT
7. #LOVE
8. #HOME
9. #BOMDIA (means hello or good day in Portuguese)
10. #RELAX

Instagram also notes that location stickers, digital time stickers, puppy ears and sleep masks also feature highly on Stories.

These are the most popular stickers used on Stories:

1. Vibrant Location sticker
2. Digital time sticker
3. “Like” sticker
4. Hashtag sticker
5. Weather sticker

And these are the most popular face filters:

1. Puppy ears
2. Sleep mask
3. Bunny ears
4. Love with heart-shaped darts
5. Koala ears

While we’re not sure which Snapchat feature Instagram could possibly adopt next, it’s clear that sometimes drawing copious amounts of inspiration from a direct competitor isn’t such a bad business decision.