Social media giant Facebook is trialling a feature in France that lets people send self-destructing messages with its Messenger app.
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Marcus told Business Insider that messaging is only second to social networking. Branded stickers have been around here and there – Lego stickers, Despicable Me stickers – but this new feature is different because it could make Facebook a lot of money.
In a statement to Buzzfeed, which first reported the test, Facebook said, “We’re excited to announce the latest in an engaging line of optional product features geared towards making Messenger the best way to communicate with the people that matter most”.
Facebook users in France were able to send vanishing missives with its smartphone Messenger application on Thursday, ramping up the challenge to Snapchat. “We look forward to hearing people’s feedback as they give it a try”.
The feature can be turned on or off just by clicking the hourglass icon in any message thread.
Facebook confirmed to Computerworld on Friday that it is running a small test of a Snapchat-like feature, enabling users to send messages that will automatically disappear. And unlike Poke, it is still available to download on the App Store.
Snapchat has always been known for ephemeral messaging.
As Snapchat acquired a huge popularity among the users, Facebook tried to take over it and offered $3 billion to Snapchat.
If users have a conversation with someone and come back to it an hour later, it will be gone. If that didn’t work, what makes Facebook believe it will work this time around?
Now that Facebook is taking a different tack, the question is whether it can steal away Snapchat’s user base. And so he should: since the former president of PayPal joined Facebook in 2014, the app has more than doubled its number of users from 300m to 700m monthly active users.
Messenger is trying to draw in customers who are not among the 1.5 billion Facebook account holders. “This will help keep existing users, but they likely won’t have people leave Snapchat”, said Kerravala.
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In his statement, Marcus adds that the Facebook users only need a name in order to talk to any person in the world.
