BREAKING NEWS!!! You're hearing it here FIRST ON STEEMIT! Instagram took a major aim at Snapchat today, releasing "Instagram Stories" which uses the same message structure as Snapchat.
Here are images of Instagram's new Stories feature which is very similar to Snapchat (photo referenced from New York Times).
On this new section of Instagram, photos or videos will appear for 24 hours before vanishing. Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to takeover Snapchat for the past few years (he put in a bid in 2013 for $3 billion but it failed). Now it appears that Instagram, a Facebook subsidiary, has stepped up to the challenge to takeover Snapchat. This is just another example of how dominant Facebook truly is. Reportedly, in recent months, people have been posting less on Facebook and Instagram; but now with the new Instagram Stories component, this is expected to change. I never quite jumped on the Snapchat train, but much of the world did. So, to those of you Snapchat fans, you can now create Instagram Stories of all your hilarious moments that you don't want to broadcast for more than 24 hours!
You can read more about this on New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/instagram-stories-snapchat-facebook.html