Battle of the Brands: Instagram Stories v Twitter Fleets

Ever since the lockdown, content has really been king – along with retail and pharma, the media industry has really been flourishing - owing to the fact that people have so much extra time on their hands. So much so that Twitter actually managed to launch a new product – Fleets- in the beginning of this month! Fleets is very similar to Instagram stories and has already started blowing up the internet, going by the buzz. Therefore, we decided to compare Fleets – the new kid on the block- to the reigning queen- Instagram Stories!

 

Talkwalker, a social media analytics company, based in Luxembourg, provides information on the using their platform. Talkwalker Analytics analyses the performance of mentions all over the internet and provides key metrics such as engagement, related themes, demographic data, geographic data and influencer data. 

 

1. Mentions: 

Since Fleets was launched just a week before the time of writing this article, we decided to look at data for the last seven days to keep things fair and square. But what is interesting to see is that the initial buzz has already surpassed that of Instagram Stories. The two peaks are on the 9th and 10th of June respectively as celebrities and influencers discovered the platform. Most of the mentions corresponding to Instagram at this time were also pertaining to Fleets as the two are quite similar and competing in the same space. It’s worth mentioning that a lot of celebrities and influencers have been talking about Fleets.

 

 

2. Demographics: 

Who’s using these channels? Both of these are quite universal in nature, however, it goes without saying, that for a new digital product, most of the users will be the early adapters. This is reflected in the demographics. Unsurprisingly, both Instagram Stories and Twitter Fleets have extremely similar demographic profiles. For both platforms, the average user is male (70.4 per cent for Stories and 70.9 per cent for Fleets) and a millennial (57.2 per cent for Stories and 55.9 per cent for Fleets). Of course, Gen Z isn’t far behind and remains the second most prominent age group.

 

 

3. Emojis: 

Let’s take a look at the emojis for both the platforms. Twitter Fleets has the larger emoji cloud – mostly because it has a higher number of mentions. The largest emoji is the crying with laughter emoji, followed by the heart emoji and the heart eyes emoji – the initial reaction seems mixed – amusement and love. For Instagram Stories, the most prominent one is the raised eyebrows emoji , followed by the heart emoji and the folded hands emoji. It will of course be interesting to see how this evolves in the coming weeks.

 

 

4. Mediums:

Last, but not the least, we decided to look at the various mediums of the buzz. Where is the conversation happening and how many unique authors (individuals) are behind it. Looks like Twitter has the lions share of the conversations for both Fleets and Stories! Folks took to Twitter to express their initial thoughts on Fleets and therefore, 97.5 per cent of the buzz for Fleets comes from there. For Instagram Stories, 73.5 per cent of the buzz is from Twitter, followed by online news and finally blogs. It’s also interesting to note that the number of unique individuals responsible for the buzz is almost double for Fleets than for Stories.