The Vertical Video Takeover: How Social Platforms Copied Their Way to Victory
A look back at how vertical video conquered social media, driven by Snapchat's pioneering Stories and adopted by tech giants.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Every social media platform once had a distinct and separate identity.
- Smartphones and the habit of holding phones vertically shifted content formats.
- Snapchat pioneered the Stories feature in late 2013 before Instagram copied it.
- Vertical video transformed into the most powerful and lucrative advertising tool.
For a while, every social and media platform maintained its own unique identity. YouTube served as the home for TV clips and a growing creator community, Instagram focused primarily on pictures, Netflix attempted to be on-demand HBO, Facebook centered on friends, Twitter on news, and Snapchat operated as a messaging app.
All these applications shared one critical trait: they grew up alongside the smartphone. Billions of new users came online, crafting content suited for the tall, skinny devices in their hands. Selfies emerged as a vertical art form because they filled the screen better and felt natural to hold. Despite early resistance from critics arguing eyes scan horizontally, phones ultimately won, shifting entertainment upright.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Snap recognized this shift first, launching Stories in late 2013 as a relaxed way to share daily moments. CEO Evan Spiegel called it a totally new way to share your day with friends or everyone. The feature exploded in popularity, becoming Snapchat's most-used feature by mid-2014, a level of virality that caught Mark Zuckerberg's attention, leading Instagram to copy the feature almost identically by August 2016.
"they deserve all the credit"
Kevin Systrom, then CEO of Instagram, acknowledged Spiegel and Snapchat by stating they deserve all the credit. The implication was clear: Stories were no longer proprietary to a single network; they were for everyone, eventually appearing on LinkedIn, Tinder, Medium, and countless other platforms.
The transition to vertical video demonstrates how user behavior ultimately overrides traditional design rules. Forcing users to watch horizontal videos on mobile devices created friction that platforms had to eliminate. Adopting user-friendly features became the ultimate survival strategy in the competitive digital landscape.
As cameras and upload speeds improved, video dominated ephemeral spaces. Video stories offered two semi-magical properties: they suited endless scrolling and simplified ad integration. Just months after launching Stories on Instagram, Facebook flooded the product with ads, utilizing the semi-random format to make advertisements feel seamless and drastically more lucrative.
Source: The Verge
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