Topic: Features
Facebook is giving WhatsApp the Snapchat treatment, too – Mashable (Feb 20, 2017)
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
Twitter replaces the Moments tab with Explore – The Verge (Jan 26, 2017)
After lots of Facebook news, it’s finally Twitter’s turn to announce a new feature, in this case an Explore tab which replaces but also subsumes Moments. This will allow trending topics and other content discovery features to sit alongside Moments in the interface, which makes a lot of sense. Moments have done fairly well at Twitter, but I suspect there have also been lots of users who never used it and were frustrated that it took up a tab in the interface, and often had an annoying little blue dot indicating there was unviewed content too. That’s not to say all those users will instantly use the Explore tab – I never look at Trending topics on Twitter, and imagine many other users are the same. But for new users or those that haven’t spent the time finding the right mix of accounts to follow, the feature can be a useful starting point for finding interesting content. Now, Twitter just needs to do a better job with the on boarding process, which is still too account centric and not topic-focused enough. It’s also worth noting, as this Mashable post does, that live video will be prominently featured at the top of the Explore tab when available.
via The Verge (official blog post here)
Facebook testing Snapchat clone called Facebook Stories – Business Insider (Jan 25, 2017)
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 organic sharing is said to have fallen recently. Live Video was supposed to be part of the solution here, per Mark Zuckerberg, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
via Business Insider
Inside Instagram’s reinvention – Recode (Jan 23, 2017)
This is a great little profile of Instagram, with lots of little tidbits of information. There are several overarching themes: the mimicking of Snapchat features is definitely one of them, but the broader context is that Instagram is generally moving really fast to ship new features, which is particularly striking given that Kevin Weil, who runs product, came from Twitter, a company that often seems paralyzed by indecision when it comes to tweaking functions. The whole piece reinforces the sense that Instagram is the vehicle through which Facebook is both iterating more quickly and trying to compete more directly with Snapchat, while the evolution within the core Facebook product is slower and more deliberate.
via Inside Instagram’s reinvention – Recode
Jack Dorsey Says Twitter Needs An Edit Function – BuzzFeed News (Dec 29, 2016)
Jack Dorsey sought user input on what Twitter needs to do next today through Twitter itself, and one of the big requests was an editing feature, which it appears he’s inclined to support. He also conceded the company needed to do more on harassment, which continues to be a big turnoff for potential users. And yet I suspect the changes Twitter needs to make most won’t be suggested by existing users because they relate to on-boarding and capturing a new slice of users that don’t currently see value in Twitter or find it too hard to use.
via Jack Dorsey Says Twitter Needs An Edit Function – BuzzFeed News
Uber to Your Friends and Snap Along the Way! (Dec 21, 2016)
Uber announced two new features – making a friend rather than a place your destination for rides, and a filter integration with Snapchat. Uber has always been open to partnerships, with Spotify and Facebook previous partners – it’s an interesting way to expand its reach and also keep people in the app longer.
via Uber to Your Friends and Snap Along the Way!
Facebook built another Snapchat clone specifically for emerging markets – Recode (Nov 8, 2016)
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
Facebook clones Snapchat’s face filters and ephemeral photo messages – The Verge (Oct 28, 2016)
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
Facebook is testing a clone of Snapchat stories inside Messenger – The Verge (Sep 30, 2016)
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
Instagram just cloned Snapchat’s Stories feature to get more people sharing – Recode (Aug 2, 2016)
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