Back in 2013, Facebook made an offer to Snapchat’s founder, Evan Spiegel, an offer of buying the app for $3 billion. However, Spiegel refused, but ever since then Facebook, together with other apps it owns, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, are trying hard to copy the features developed first by Snapchat.
The most recent attempt to replicate the photo-sharing popular strategy of Snapchat was seen this Monday, when WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, revealed that they are releasing a new version of their Status feature. This allows users to set videos, GIFs and images as a status update, which is similar to the Stories feature made famous by Snapchat.
At the same time, the status you share will last for 24 hours and then it will disappear. Back in August, Instagram also introduced the Stories feature, which behaves identical to the one on Snapchat. In December, Messenger started to underline the importance of sending photos. As it seems, Facebook is trying hard to copy Snap (the parent company for Snapchat) in that it focuses more on the camera feature.
However, Randall Sarafa, the product manager at WhatsApp, claimed that they are not copying anything, they are just developing new features on their own with the hope that people will be delighted by it. He also denied that he sees any other reason for which they would create new features. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Snapchat refused to comment on the similarities between their features and the recent updates to WhatsApp.
No Instagram employee wanted to say anything on this subject either. However, Jennifer Hakes, the spokesperson for Facebook Messenger, declared that in their vision the camera is replacing the keyboard and most people want to use it daily, which is why they are changing the app in this direction.
Leave a Reply