Instagram vs Snapchat. The Battle Continues In 2017

Snapchat: The Underdog Nobody Should Be Underestimating

Snapchat has had a genuinely fascinating year. Ever since Evan Spiegel famously turned down Mark Zuckerberg’s $3 billion acquisition offer back in 2013, it has been a relentless head-to-head war between the two platforms. Zuckerberg’s response? If you can’t buy them, build it yourself.

I have had a deep personal understanding of Snapchat since it started gaining real momentum in 2012. At the start of 2016, I made the decision to start using it properly — for business purposes and personal branding. And I want to be honest: at the time, that was met with genuine scepticism from most professionals around me. Even five years after launch, Snapchat was still being dismissed by a large section of the business community as a platform for teenage sexting. Understandably, that reputation kept most serious professionals as far away as possible.

But there was a community of early adopters — and I was proud to be among them — who saw what Snapchat was actually doing. Professionals started using it for direct, personal interaction with clients and potential customers, and something genuinely interesting happened: B2B and B2C communication started to feel like C2C. There was a warmth and humanity to Snapchat interactions that no other platform could replicate at the time. It felt like two real people talking, not a brand broadcasting at a customer.

I built some of the most valuable professional connections of my career through Snapchat during that period. And I believe 2017 is the year when a much larger group of brands and professionals are finally going to understand why — here is what I think changes everything.

“All it takes is the coolest kid in school to wear a lame t-shirt, and suddenly it’s the best t-shirt anyone’s ever seen — and everybody wants it.”

When Facebook launched Instagram Stories — a near-identical copy of Snapchat’s core format — it did something unexpected for Snapchat. It validated the concept. Brands that had dismissed disappearing content as a teenage fad were suddenly looking at it through a very different lens, simply because the Facebook name was attached to it. That is both absurd and entirely human. And it is very good news for Snapchat.

Snapchat Predictions for 2017

1. Going all in on the brand — hardware, merch and gadgets

After the successful launch of Spectacles, Snapchat’s camera-equipped sunglasses that sold out almost immediately, I would not be at all surprised to see Snap Inc. lean aggressively into physical brand building. Expect official Snapchat merchandise, more hardware experiments, and a deliberate effort to own cultural territory with that 12–20 demographic they have spent years cultivating. This is not just a tech company any more — this is a lifestyle brand in the making.

2. A proper discovery feature — finally

This is part prediction, part plea. Right now, you can add new friends on Snapchat by their username, their Snapcode, proximity, or from your phone’s address book. That is it. Compare that to Instagram, where the entire discovery engine is powered by Facebook’s formidable algorithm — and you start to understand why an Instagram Stories post can go viral while a Snapchat Story rarely escapes the creator’s existing circle.

A meaningful discovery feature is the single most important thing Snapchat could build right now. Without it, scaling a community on the platform is extraordinarily difficult, and brands will continue to favour Instagram for reach. Get this right, and the competitive picture shifts dramatically. For a deeper look at how social media discovery affects your marketing strategy, our team at Matrix Internet has explored this extensively.

3. A long-overdue app redesign

The Snapchat app, for all its cultural power, remains a navigational maze. The Media Discover section in particular is cluttered, counterintuitive, and frankly, frustrating to use. I believe Snap knows this — and a significant UI redesign is on the way. A smoother, more intuitive experience would remove one of the last major barriers to broader professional adoption of the platform.

Instagram: Zuckerberg’s Secret Weapon

Where do you even begin with Instagram’s 2017? Stories launched to widespread mockery — “Instagram copied Snapchat” was everywhere — and then quietly became one of the most used features on the platform. Now that the clone controversy has settled, we can look at what Instagram is actually building, and the picture is more ambitious than most people realise.

There is a clear and intentional divergence happening between Snapchat and Instagram, even as they superficially chase similar features. Snapchat is doubling down on its young, raw, personal identity. Instagram — backed by Meta’s resources and infrastructure — is reaching for something much bigger.

Instagram Predictions for 2017

1. Feature velocity that leaves Snapchat behind

Instagram will not stop at copying what Snapchat has already done — it will surpass it. With the full weight of Facebook’s product and engineering teams behind it, expect a stream of new features that go beyond anything Snapchat has shipped. Some will look familiar, but many will be genuinely new territory. Zuckerberg plays a long game, and Instagram is his primary vehicle for the next decade of social media dominance.

2. Deep Facebook–Instagram Live integration

Instagram Live is still in beta at the time of writing, and Facebook Live has already become a serious broadcasting platform. The logical next step — and I think it is inevitable — is full integration between the two. Imagine streaming live from Instagram and appearing simultaneously on your Facebook timeline. Think of it as Twitter’s relationship with Periscope, but with the combined audience scale of Facebook and Instagram. That is an extraordinarily powerful broadcast tool, and it would be a significant competitive advantage over anything Snapchat can currently offer.

3. Instagram stops being a photo app

This is the biggest shift of all, and it is already well underway. Instagram was originally built for photographers — a beautiful, filtered, image-first experience. That era is over. Instagram in 2017 will lean fully into its identity as a complete social communication platform. The emphasis will move from images to community, from content to conversation. For brands, this means Instagram strategy needs to evolve beyond beautiful product photography into genuine engagement and storytelling.

What This Means for B2C Brands Right Now

Here is the practical takeaway for any business thinking about where to invest in social media heading into 2017: the answer is not one platform or the other — it is understanding what each one does differently, and using them accordingly.

Use Snapchat for intimacy and loyalty. The brands that have genuinely cracked Snapchat are the ones that use it to make their audience feel like insiders. Behind-the-scenes content, real-time storytelling, direct replies, and the ephemeral format all create a sense of closeness that other platforms simply cannot replicate. If your goal is to build a deeply loyal community that feels a personal connection to your brand, Snapchat is still the most powerful tool available for that specific job.

Use Instagram for discovery and growth. Instagram’s algorithm-driven discovery, its visual identity, and its rapidly expanding feature set make it the better choice for reaching new audiences and building broad brand awareness. The integration with Facebook’s advertising infrastructure alone gives it a targeting capability that dwarfs anything available on Snapchat today.

The brands that are going to win in 2017 are the ones that stop treating these two platforms as competitors and start treating them as complementary tools — each playing a distinct role in a joined-up social strategy. If you need help thinking through what that looks like for your business, our social media marketing team at Matrix Internet would love to talk.

Conclusion

The battle between Snapchat and Instagram is not a zero-sum game — and the brands that treat it as one are going to be left behind. What we are watching in 2017 is two platforms finding their distinct identities after a period of frantic imitation. Snapchat is leaning into raw, human, youth-driven connection. Instagram is scaling into a full-spectrum communication platform with the most powerful advertising machine in social media history behind it. Neither is going away. Neither is winning outright. The smartest move any B2C brand can make right now is to stop asking “which one?” and start asking “how do we use both well?” I would like to thank the team at