Is Instagram The Best Hope for Facebook?

We addressed Facebook’s crossposting strategy, which allows you to upload a video to one page and share that video on other Facebook-owned social networks. However, Facebook released a number of new features and notifications on Instagram, and this raised questions about Facebook's strategy.

Instagram has reached 1 billion active users and to spur its future growth, it has launched a new video app called IGTV alongside new features, such as video search. Instagram has attracted the attention of brands around the world and is rolling out new sharing and notification features that direct users to its parent company Facebook.

Facebook has released a new feature that enables you to share Instagram Stories on Facebook. Once you linked your Instagram to your Facebook, you can activate the “Share your story on Facebook” option, which means all future stories will be shared on Facebook automatically. You also have the option to post your stories manually. Facebook Stories hit 150M daily users and it is clear that the aim of adding “share your story on Facebook” option is to boast its engagement rates.

Another new feature is showing Facebook notifications on Instagram. A growing number of Instagram users are turning their backs on Facebook and with this new feature; Facebook aims to win back its active users. When you post on Facebook, your Instagram followers are notified that you have posted and while doing this, we hope that Facebook respects privacy settings.

As we have mentioned in last few articles, Instagram is developing constantly with new features; this increases its popularity and the time spent on the app. According to data from SimilarWeb, an average user spent 29 minutes on Instagram in September 2017 and today that time is estimated to be 55 minutes. This leads Facebook to advertise more on this app. Therefore, the answer to the question in the title will be “Yes” in short while.

Instagram is now worth $100 billion, up from the $1 billion valuation Facebook placed upon it when the social network acquired the company. It is reasonable for Facebook to benefit from Instagram to overcome its stagnation.