Systrom had told his communications team that he would acknowledge to the press that the Stories format was a Snapchat invention that Instagram had copied, and that was why they had the same name. (“You’re going to do WHAT?” Facebook PR head Caryn Marooney exclaimed. Usually Facebook would spin any copied products as a “natural evolution” of what users wanted.) It was a good instinct because that was how the press evaluated the move anyway. All the major headlines used some version of the word “copy” in them. By not denying it, Systrom took the momentum out of the criticism. He explained that
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