That both the Facebook and Messenger apps have become bloated with all these cloned features from Snapchat is no secret. Particularly the 24-hour ephemeral post on either platform dubbed Facebook Stories and Messenger Day for the Facebook and Messenger mobile apps respectively.
Well, Facebook has noticed it erred thereby cloning the feature from Snapchat in a manner that is both redundant and unnecessary duplication. The social network is now correcting that by letting the user update just a single ‘Stories’ that will now appear across both platforms in synced manner.
Also, the viewership counts will also sync across the platforms. A Story viewed on Messenger will also count as viewed when you switch to the Facebook app; the vice versa is also true. To make things clear, Facebook has done away with the Messenger Day and Facebook Stories and now just displays them synced and across both platforms as simply ‘Stories’.
Conor Hayes told TechCrunch, “We needed to make it easier for people to share Stories across different apps. Some people actually thought these experiences were already connected. We feel like it would make sense… now that we’re connecting the two experiences, it makes sense for them to have the same name.”
It makes a lot of sense for the user to post just one Stories which appears across the apps instead of having to post on both platforms manually. It will also go a long way in boosting usage of the feature, now that the redundancy and duplication of the process have been eliminated.
It is also important to remember that Instagram (also owned by Facebook) has been testing out cross-post to Facebook Stories. Those posts on Instagram will also populate through to Messenger app as well. However, there seem to be no plans (yet) to push Stories posted on Facebook over to Instagram Stories.
In September, Facebook revealed stats on the Stories usage. Putting usage on Messenger at over 70 million per day, 300 million on Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status. It is interesting to note that Facebook is doing better with the Stories when compared to Snapchat’s 178 million.
However, the company has decided to keep the camera features for the Facebook and Messenger app distinctly different. The Facebook camera features are more inclined towards augmented reality masks and effects, while Messenger camera features more tailored for adding captions and stylized text to invite your friends to join in on a live chat.
