The juggernaut that is Instagram has hit another big milestone.

Facebook announced that the Stories feature on its photography-based social network is now used by over 400m people each day. That, as has been noted by many people, is over double the 191m active users reported in Snapchat’s last quarter.

The irony is that when Instagram Stories was launched in 2016 many were quick to call it a clone of Snapchat. However, it took only eight months for the Facebook-owned service to race ahead of Snapchat’s user numbers.

The news was accompanied by the announcement of the new ability for Instagram users to add music to their stories. Music takes the form of stickers, allowing creators to add a specific track to the background of the content. Music can be searched by name, mood, genre or popularity, with a preview available before it’s added. Music can also be added to videos.

Boom times

All of which is yet more bad news for Snapchat owner Snap. Earlier this month analysts slashed their expectations for the company, sending its shares into freefall. In March 2017 Snap was trading at $27.09. Today it trades at $13.10, although that is up on its May 2018 low of $10.58.

Around the same time an analyst at Needham & Co spoke of a “dramatic slowdown” in the amount brands were spending on the company’s products.

In contrast, Facebook-owned Snapchat rival Instagram is in the ascendancy, having now hit a market worth of $1 billion. It recently passed the 1bn user milestone too.