If you're not excited by stickers, there are a few other Instagram Stories updates that could be useful. You can now shoot "hands-free" videos just by tapping on the screen, add as much text as you'd like and save stories from the past day as a video. And of course, there's the expected holiday cheer in the form a candy cane brush and special stickers (with more on the way for New Years).

While it makes sense for Instagram to play catchup with Snapchat, it would also be nice to see it innovating a bit when it comes to new features. Its new livestreaming capability, for example, is a sort of hybrid between Facebook Live and Snapchat. It's not entirely new, but at least it's distinctive.