• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, April 13, 2017

Stories -- with lets people share moments from their day in slide-show form -- is proving to be a big success for Instagram. Since January, the number of people using the feature every day has ballooned from 150 million to 200 million, Instagram revealed on Thursday.

To sustain growth, the Facebook unit is adding some new creative tools in the Instagram camera, which are designed to add “more context to photos and videos,” a company spokeswoman said.

After taking a photo or video and tapping the smiley face icon, users will be given the option of adding a “selfie sticker” featuring their profile photo.

Similarly, users can now pin their selfie stickers, along with text, emojis, and other stickers.

“You can pin multiple stickers to each video,” the spokeswoman said. “Sticker pinning works for Boomerangs, too.”

In the coming days, Instagram also plans to bring “geostickers” to four additional cities, and it is letting local community members actually design the stickers.

The new tools should look familiar to anyone who spends time on Snapchat, which apparently is no coincidence.

In fact, Facebook engineers are being encouraged to steal right from Snap’s playbook, The Information reported earlier this week.

That was clearly the case when Instagram added Stories to Instagram, last summer. Just last month, meanwhile, Facebook added a Stories feature to its flagship app.

As of March, Instagram's global community exceeded 600 million users.