Instagram takes on Twitter and Snapchat with new messaging feature The messaging platform is likely to cannibalise Facebook, which bought Instagram for $1bn last year. However, it will also help the photo-sharing network take a bite out of rivals such as Snapchat, a photo-sharing service popular with teens, WhatsApp, the group messaging platform, and Twitter's Vine video service. However, analysts took a different view. They argued that Facebook would much prefer to lose users to Instagram, where it still has a chance to make money from them, rather than to outside competitors. "Instagram is being threatened by rivals such as Vine and Snapchat, but is also seeing indirect competition from popular messaging services like WhatsApp, where users are spending more time at the expense of Instagram and also Facebook itself," said Eden Zoller at Ovum. This is that last thing that Facebook wants. [The messaging service] may draw people to Instagram, but they will remain in the Facebook ecosystem. As long as they can monetise those users, Facebook is probably fine with that," said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner. They couldn't buy Snapchat, so they made a feature which does 80pc of that. Snapchat has particular traction among teens - a demographic which is hugely valuable to advertisers, but which has started to cool on Facebook. It is also very popular for "sexting" - or sending sexually explicit content - because pictures are automatically deleted moments after they are opened by the recipient. Mr Systrom said Instagram had not considered whether Instagram would be used for similar purposes, but reiterated that the company does not censor photographs unless they are flagged up as a problem by users. Some Silicon Valley observers were disappointed that the new launch was not more radical, however. "It feels like there is a feature race, but all [these services] are starting to look the same," said Mr Blau. They are starting to look very homogenous.