Facebook fires another salvo at Snapchat with Stories
Facebook is trying to take on rivals like Snapchat by incorporating their unique features into Instagram, Whatsapp and now Facebook app
The popular Stories feature seen first in Snapchat and later in Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, is now also available on the primary Facebook app. The feature will be available to both Android and iOS users who have received the latest update to the Facebook app. Stories is like a montage of photos and videos, which you can share with friends, a concept first introduced by Snapchat. It allows users to capture their special moments throughout the day with a bunch of photos and video clips. These would appear on their homepage and can be seen by their friends and followers for a period of 24 hours before disappearing from the timeline and the app by itself. It was one of the few unique features of Snapchat until Facebook decided to incorporate into all its social networking apps.
How is Facebook Stories different from others?
User can create Facebook Stories by swiping left to right on the home page, while Stories of their friends can be seen at the top of their feeds.
To make things easier for users Facebook has almost followed the same set of steps to create and post Stories as seen on Snapchat or Instagram. If you have used Stories on any of these before, you won’t have any difficulty in using it now. User can also post their Stories in their timeline and it will show at the top like any other post. One can decide who can see the Stories just like any other Facebook post.
What makes Facebook Stories better than Snapchat Stories is the number of unique filters it offers. It has more than 50 unique filters, photo effects and frames. One can also add text to add context to Facebook Stories.
One can also add beard on a face, add text or make videos look like work of art by some famous painter on similar lines as the Artisto app.
Also, in Facebook Stories you can record videos of up to 20 seconds, unlike Snapchat which can record videos of up to 10 seconds. User can also save their Stories before it disappears on the phone in case they want to keep it.
These filters and camera effects will be available to users from the moment they open the camera in the Facebook app. They won’t have to click a shot or record a video and then apply them. They can use them before taking a shot or recording a video. This allows users to get a live preview of filters.
What it means for users
Facebook has been trying to pack in all the popular features on social media on its apps, so users will spend more time on its app rather than go to other social media apps like Snapchat. While this gives Facebook users another cool feature to play around with, it also adds to the clutter and makes the app more resource intensive.
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FIRST PUBLISHED29.03.2017 | 11:49 AM IST
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