Snapchat's top influencers have felt neglected for years. Now some are pushing their followers to other platforms, including Instagram and YouTube.

Sallia Goldstein

During a November 2014 trip to Los Angeles, Boston-based Snapchat "creator" Mike Platco stopped by Snap's Venice, California, offices to say hello. At the time Platco had amassed a sizable audience of followers — large enough that he was preparing to leave his day job to create content for Snapchat full-time. He figured a casual visit to Snap HQ, while perhaps unexpected, wasn't untoward given his profile on the platform. But after trading messages with a few Snap employees, Platco was turned away at the door. There would be no visit.

“That was the very first in a long history of instances where Snapchat really solidified its positionIt’s because I have to.”

Goldstein shifted her work to Instagram because Snapchat’s pokey performance on Android made the app effectively unusable for her. She was unable to work through those issues with Snap (messages to support went nowhere), so now she uses her Snapchat account to push her followers to Instagram. She’ll often start a story on Snapchat and tell her followers to head over to Instagram to watch the rest. “I would much rather make stories on Snapchat than Instagram,” Goldstein said. "Snapchat has so many more creative tools than Instagram." But she's had great success migrating followers from Snapchat to Instagram; each promotion reliably sends between 500 and 1,000 followers across. Goldstein figures her Instagram following will match her Snapchat audience in a matter of months.

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