08.08.2017
Facebook Kills Another of its Less Successful Snapchat Clones, Lifestage
For all the recent fuss about Facebook successfully copying Snapchat's Stories feature and squashing the latter's growth in the process, it's good to get an occasional reminder that most of Facebook's attempts to clone Snapchat have failed. On the "Facebook Copying Snapchat" narrative page on the site, you'll find something of a history of this phenomenon, including a timeline, and the overwhelming trend is one of failure rather than success. In other words, the success of Instagram Stories is an aberration and not indicative of how this has generally gone for Facebook. Further, even the Stories format that's worked so well in Instagram has fizzled in the core Facebook app and been a source of user frustration in Messenger and WhatsApp. Lifestage is one of many apps Facebook has created over the last few years which took an app- rather than feature-centric approach to cloning Snapchat, none of which have
02.08.2017
Instagram Releases Engagement Numbers Rivaling Snapchat’s at Much Bigger Scale
A year ago today, Instagram debuted its Stories feature, which took Snapchat's feature of the same name and adapted it slightly, something I criticized at the time in a blog post, arguing that the sheer brazenness of the copying should be beneath Instagram. Whatever the ethical shortcomings of such a move, it's clear that it's been very successful, with over 250 million daily users of the feature a year later, and Instagram hasn't been shy in gloating about its milestones, especially where they make for favorable comparisons versus Snapchat. We're getting more of that today, with Instagram offering up new data on time spent in its app among different age groups, which again compare nicely with Snapchat's equivalent metrics. Snap Inc said on its Q1 earnings call that its users spend on average over 30 minutes per day in the app, up from a range of 25-30 minutes described in its S-1 fil
23.05.2017
Instagram Adds Crowdsourced Geographic and Topic-Based Stories
Just this morning, I was commenting on Snapchat's latest feature, and how Facebook and its various properties could easily copy it if it turns out to be popular, and now here we are just a few hours later with yet another example of Instagram mimicking a Snapchat feature. This time it's location- and topic-based crowdsourced Stories, which will pull from publicly available Stories to create a collage of sorts around places and topics. Snapchat recently introduced a search feature which does much the same thing. The feature is live already and a quick bit of testing suggests the content will be the usual dizzying mix of interesting and uninteresting, beautiful and prosaic, and in some cases risqué. I suspect the more obscure the location (e.g. my local town here in Utah) the more obscure the content will be – the quality of local content was definitely sub-par compared with location-based content from a large city. Though in both cases much of it was pretty mundane – food shots, ra
05.04.2017
No one is using Facebook stories, so it turned your friends into ghosts – The Verge
If Facebook had to choose between a huge backlash against the way a feature was rolled out and general ambivalence towards it, I'd guess it would choose the latter. That seems to be happening now with the version of the Stories feature in the core Facebook app, despite the massive popularity of the equivalent feature in Instagram, and in contrast to the negative response to the versions Facebook launched in Messenger and WhatsApp. The good news here is that Facebook rolled the feature out much more carefully and subtly, though this new wrinkle of showing faded versions of the profile pictures of friends who haven't used the feature is a sign that Facebook may be starting to turn up the dial a little on promotion, though it's an odd way to go about that. Hopefully Facebook will be smart enough not to force the issue by over-promoting it in obnoxious ways as it did with live video in the core Facebook app or with My Day in Messenger. Again, far better to have a feature fall a little flat
28.03.2017
Facebook launches stories to complete its all-out assault on Snapchat – The Verge
We've known this was coming for a while, but there are a couple of extra wrinkles here. First up, let's get the obvious out of the way – yes, this is another example of Facebook copying Snapchat, although at this point it's also copying itself, specifically with regard to the presentation of Stories within the Facebook app, which is very similar to what it already does on Instagram. The good news is that it's avoided the heavy-handedness that characterized its launch of the Stories equivalent My Day in Messenger and to a lesser extent
16.03.2017
WhatsApp brings back text Status it replaced with Stories – TechCrunch
My Techpinions column today argues that Facebook has recently been trying too hard to force new features on users, and needs to tone things down. That's mostly been the case in the Facebook-branded apps, but this WhatsApp change a while back was another example of replacing something users liked with something Facebook wanted them to use. The good news here is that the backlash wasn't nearly as bad as with last week's My Day launch in Messenger, and the company is already rolling back the change while preserving the new feature as well. It's interesting, though, that both My Day and this Status change in WhatsApp were essentially clones of the Snapchat Stories feature which had previously worked so well for Facebook in Instagram. This cloning has been a story for some time, but the way Facebook is now pushing it on users is starting to backfire, which is a particular shame because the Instagram version was handled
09.03.2017
Messenger just became the latest Facebook app to launch a Stories feature – Recode
This feature has been in testing since September, but is now rolling out globally. As I've said previously, Facebook has done much better in cloning Snapchat successfully since it stopped trying to recreate the entire app and focused instead on features, with Instagram Stories being the standout example. It's now rolling out Stories in various ways in its separate apps, with Messenger second to go global, and the core Facebook app likely coming next. And why not? Though I think it's a little distasteful to see Facebook copying Snapchat so blatantly, it certainly appears to be working, and taking a feature used by a c
07.03.2017
Instagram Stories launches geostickers as its Snap attack continues – TechCrunch
Just a quick one here to document yet another "borrowed" feature from Snapchat in Instagram: this time, geostickers. No sponsored stickers yet, but given how hard Facebook is currently pushing to find new ways and places to serve up ads in its various properties, those can't be far behind. The geostickers are pretty limited for now, but no doubt they'll also spread in time. This doesn't feel like one of the most important missing pieces in Instagram's feature set, but no doubt it'll help Snapchat converts feel a little more at home once it rolls out more fully.
via TechCrunch
20.02.2017
Facebook is giving WhatsApp the Snapchat treatment, too – Mashable
Yet another use for Facebook's very successful cloning of Snapchat's Stories feature in Instagram, this time coming to WhatsApp. This is also another feature-level attempt to take share from Snapchat, which again seems to be what's finally working for Facebook, in contrast to the whole-app approach it once favored. In this case, Facebook is ditching the Stories name and instead putting this feature in the Status slot in WhatsApp, but it looks like the format is very much the same.
via Mashable
30.01.2017
Instagram Stories is stealing Snapchat’s users – TechCrunch
This would be very bad news if it turns out to be true – celebrities and those who manage celebrity and other accounts on Snapchat claim they're seeing a significant reduction in views of their Stories on Snapchat as a result of both Instagram's launch of its own Stories feature and Snapchat's move to kill the Auto-Advance feature for Stories in its own app. This kind of thing is always worth taking with a pinch of salt – the ranges discussed here are very broad, and some of the data might be outliers – but the trend seems to be consistently downward, and is backed up by some app download data as well. The positive spin from Snap here would be that it's actually focusing engagement more by only showing users the Stories they actually choose to see, but I'm not sure investors will buy that. Again, any day now we should have some real data from Snap to go on to evaluate engagement and usage, but this is another specific concern they'll need to address in the S-1 filing. In the mean
25.01.2017
Facebook testing Snapchat clone called Facebook Stories – Business Insider
Instagram Stories seem to have worked out really well for Instagram, increasing engagement and gaining rapid adoption, while Snapchat's growth seems to have leveled off a little lately. It now appears Facebook plans to bring stories into the core Facebook experience too, which makes lots of sense: for all Instagram's popularity, Facebook's user base is several times as large, and so Facebook can easily extend the feature to many more people in this way. The attraction of the Stories format (and Snapchat's ephemeral approach in general) has always been that users didn't have to work so hard to post the perfect picture to live forever on the site. Snapchat users gravitate towards the throwaway nature of sharing on the platform, and Instagram's Stories feature has been a nice antidote to the false perfection that's characterized a lot of sharing among teens in particular there. Facebook should benefit in the same way from this feature, especially since
08.11.2016
Facebook built another Snapchat clone specifically for emerging markets – Recode
The Flash app is yet another attempt by Facebook to recreate some of Snapchat's features in one of its own apps, and appears to be building off the more successful cloning the company has been doing in 2016. This one is specifically focused on emerging markets, where Snapchat doesn't have nearly the audience it does in mature markets (or nearly the audience Facebook does). It's also yet another example of putting the camera at the forefront of the Facebook experience.
via Recode
28.10.2016
Facebook clones Snapchat’s face filters and ephemeral photo messages – The Verge
Facebook's new camera app (currently in testing) clones several Snapchat features, including filters/lenses, and ephemeral messages. The filter/lens technology is built on the acquisition of MSQRD.
via The Verge
30.09.2016
Facebook is testing a clone of Snapchat stories inside Messenger – The Verge
Yet another experimental attempt by Facebook to recreate a Snapchat feature, this time within Messenger, and only in Poland. Following two early attempts to recreate Snapchat in totality in its own new apps, much of Facebook's Snacphat cloning in 2016 has come through both features within other apps and more experimental approaches, launching new features or apps in single countries, rather than making a big global announcement. This seems smart, given Facebook's history in this space, many of its attempts having fallen flat.
via The Verge
02.08.2016
Instagram just cloned Snapchat’s Stories feature to get more people sharing – Recode
Facebook's first successful attempt to clone a Snapchat feature ironically came not in Facebook but in Instagram, an app it was able to acquire (unlike Snapchat itself). There's plenty of evidence at this point that Instagram Stories have done very well for Facebook (and some that it's hit Snapchat hard).
via Recode
17.06.2014
Facebook Slingshot is much more than a Snapchat clone – The Verge
This article suggests that Slingshot was not just a Snapchat clone, and it did have additional, original features too, but it was almost universally seen as yet another attempt by Facebook to copy Snapchat, following its failed attempt to buy the company in 2013. Slingshot was finally killed off when Facebook shut down its Creative Labs team in late 2015.
via The Verge
13.11.2013
Snapchat Spurned $3 Billion Acquisition Offer from Facebook – WSJ
This is, as far as we know, the only time Facebook actually tried to buy Snapchat outright, and although Facebook had attempted to clone Snapchat for the first time in 2012, most of its efforts to copy features or the entire app have come since, starting in 2014 and accelerating dramatically in 2016.
via WSJ
21.12.2012
Facebook Launches Snapchat Competitor “Poke”, An iOS App For Sending Expiring Text, Photos, And Videos – TechCrunch
Facebook's first attempt to copy Snapchat came in the form of its Poke app, launched in late 2012 and eventually killed off for good in May 2014 after it failed to gain meaningful traction.
via TechCrunch
Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in 2013, but Snapchat wasn’t interested. As far as we know, that was the only acquisition attempt Facebook made, but it has repeatedly tried to clone either the entire Snapchat experience or individual features both before and since. Snapchat is one of the few apps that’s successfully eaten into Facebook’s share of teenagers’ and young adults’ time, and so the latter appears very keen either to bring the property in house (as it did with Instagram) or to recreate the feature set and simply move the usage back over to Facebook.
This effort started way back in 2012, with the Poke app, which focused on ephemeral photo messaging, but it didn’t go anywhere. The next attempt was in 2014, when Facebook launched a more full featured app, Slingshot, only to kill it off after a year. A variety of other attempts at ephemeral messaging features within Messenger have come and gone (and in some cases stuck around) but without much more success than the earlier ones.
In 2016, though, Facebook has taken a new tack, focusing on Instagram as its main vehicle for competing with Snapchat and in some cases ripping off features fairly brazenly. I wrote a blog post about Instagram Stories and its blatant copying of Snapchat Stories in August last year, so I won’t rehash the whole thing here, but suffice to say that I think Instagram could be at least a little more imaginative in how it’s going about some of this cloning.
Having said that, it appears to be working – Instagram already has as many daily users of Stories as Snapchat has daily users in total (150 million), and Snapchat’s growth appears to be tapering off a little. By putting some of the most-used features of Snapchat into Instagram, Facebook is giving users fewer reasons to go to Snapchat, and more reasons to spend additional time in its own properties. Using Instagram, which has iterated very rapidly over the past year and is already popular among the same demographic as Snapchat, rather than the core Facebook product for this cloning of Snapchat features is smart.
That’s not to say that Facebook has given up on copying Snapchat features in its core product, however. Fall 2016 saw several more attempts around Facebook, with its Flash app for emerging markets, Messenger Day for ephemeral messages (tested in Poland in September), filters in the Facebook camera, lenses in Facebook Live, and more. I sometimes think the copying accusation is over-applied, but there’s plenty of material here for the broader accusation – Facebook clearly is copying many of Snapchat’s features, albeit with mixed success. The latest example is the news that the Stories feature from Instagram will be making its way into the core Facebook product too.