Does Facebook have a plan for taking down Snapchat ?

When Instagram copied Snapchat's popular Stories feature in August — it's a tool that lets users share photos and videos for up to 24 hours before they disappear — Instagram execs said they did so because Stories was a format lots of other services would copy, too.

"[We] built on a format that Snapchat invented," Instagram's product boss Kevin Weil explained in December. "It's a format, [and] we believe that format will be universal."

That format is becoming universal — at least at Facebook.

Instagram and Snapchat both make money by placing ads alongside user Stories, and WhatsApp just appointed its first COO, a sign that the company is starting to think about monetizing its 1.2 billion monthly users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion back in 2013, and was rebuffed. Since then, Facebook has tried to copy multiple features from Snapchat’s app for standalone Facebook apps, and recently inserted what’s more or less a clone of Snapchat into Instagram, on top of its original features.

Is Instagram the Snapchat’s biggest threat ?

Facebook may be the dominant player in social media, mobile advertising, and news, but Snapchat is the most formidable competitor it’s ever encountered. Snapchat has a great feel for what its more than 100 million daily users want, and it moves fast. Combine that with its attractive demographics—86% of Snapchatters are between the ages of 13 and 34—and you can see why these two companies are now battling it out in one of the most aggressive rivalries.