Instagram's ephemeral Stories feature has been around for less than a year, but it's already beaten Snapchat at its own game. Today, the social network is taking yet another swing at its rival with a new feature that lets you reply to Stories with a photo or video. That's right, in addition to writing a message reply, you can now also respond with an image of your very own.

Basically, now when you're watching a Story, there's a new camera button at the bottom of the screen. Tap that, and you can either snap a pic of yourself, record a video or take a Boomerang. You can even move and resize the Story image that you're replying to and insert that in your photo. Apply a variety of filters or stickers, and hit Send to ship your creation over to your friend. At the other end, your buddy will get your photo/video response in their Direct message inbox, along with the thumbnail of the original Story.

Instagram Stories continues to be one of Instagram's hottest features. It now has 250 million daily users, which far surpasses the numbers on Snapchat, and it also has Live video, which its rival lacks. It's not too surprising once you consider how hard Instagram has been pushing the Stories feature, plus Instagram's existing userbase probably helped propel its popularity too.

If you're interested in checking the new photo / video reply feature in Stories, you can try it out with the new update starting today.