Instagram’s Stories service is one year old as of August 2, 2017, and Instagram is releasing some usage data on the service to celebrate, as well as a new sticker pack with a birthday theme. There were no details or previews on the birthday sticker pack, but the usage data paints a pretty clear picture of just how well users have taken to Instagram’s rollout of the Stories service. The impact has been especially strong on businesses that use Instagram. Among that crowd, over 50% have used Stories at one time or another, and one out of every five organically generated Stories from businesses on Instagram is responded to with a direct message.
Both in and out of the business world, demographic data and usage data makes it fairly clear how the service is used. Individuals under age 24 tend to use Instagram for at least 32 minutes per day, while the older crowd averages 24 minutes or more of usage. As for Stories specifically, the top ten hashtags are #GOODMORNING, #WORK, #GOODNIGHT, #MOOD, #HAPPYBIRTHDAY, #TBT, #LOVE, #HOME, #BOMDIA, and #RELAX. Bomdia, for those who don’t know, is roughly equivalent to “hello” or “good day” in Portuguese. The top five location tags are Jakarta, Indonesia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, New York City, New York, London, UK, and Madrid, Spain. Finally, the data released includes the top five face filters, which are puppy ears, sleep mask, bunny ears, love, and koala ears.
Instagram Stories rolled out a year ago and expanded the service beyond its core function of social photography. Much like rival Snapchat, Instagram users could shoot and customize short videos with Stories, and the extra sharing and customization features made Instagram Stories easy and expressive to use. While Instagram did not manage to knock any competition out of the running with Stories or bring any revolutionary new features to the social video space, it’s safe to say that the service has shaken things up in the single year that it’s been around. The service does not seem to be going anywhere, so it will have plenty of time to gain more features and users, and perhaps at some point, expand enough to monopolize its space.