Facebook Messenger is experimenting with self-destructing messages. At present available for some Android as well as iOS users in France, and would be surely be coming to our country naija soonest if successful as I gathered.
Now what is this particularly about? Well,the feature gives people the opportunity to send messages that kind of disappear in an hour.
Via means of a press statement, Facebook revealed that “Disappearing messages gives people another fun option to choose from when they communicate on Messenger.
We look forward to hearing people’s feedback as they give it a try.” Users will have the ability to turn on disappearing messages in a chat when they tap on an hourglass icon appearing right at the top right of their screen. Anyone else in the conversation thread can turn the feature off.
While this format of messages lasting for a short interval, may bring in some competitive advantages to Messenger, which claims 700 million users directly against Snapchat (an app which Facebook had a time attempted to acquire for a staggering amount of $3 billion), a lot of top messaging apps have already brought in such related features.
An instance here is Line, which boasts 211 million users, had of late introduced “Hidden Chats,” or encrypted messages that vanish within a determined interval of time.
Also WeChat, the most famed messaging app in China with over half a billion users, has given people the opportunity to withdraw messages since 2014.
The biggest attraction here of such ephemeral messages, nonetheless, in Facebook Messenger exceeds just sending delicate information, disappearing messages add a bigger experience of real-life conversations, an experience Messenger seeks to reproduce with features like read receipts as well as its quick selfie cam.
This will not be Facebook’s debut as regards experimenting with ephemeral messaging. Back In December 2012, at the same time as Snapchat was just taking off, Facebook embarked on the launch of Poke, a similar service that sent self-destructing photos and videos but it didn’t really survive.
Well, I am expectant keeping my hands crossed this time as there is larger chances of it surviving as this feature is already thriving on Snapchat.
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