Facebook Just Created Another Rip-Off Of Snapchat
WhatsApp is making an update to its app, turning it for the first time into a platform for passively consuming content, similar to the way people scroll through their Facebook or Instagram newsfeeds. It’s a move that could finally usher in a money-making system like advertising.
WhatsApp has more than 1 billion users. The company says its users send more than 50 billion messages each day, 3.3 billion photos, 760 million videos and 80 million GIFs.
WhatsApp’s new Status feature, rolled out on Monday, will let users share photos, GIFs or videos overlaid with drawings, emojis and a caption that will be visible to selected friends for 24 hours, before disappearing.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s exactly like Snapchat’s hugely successful Stories feature, launched three years ago, which lets users share content in the form of “timelines”.
WhatsApp says the status posts will be end-to-end encrypted, just as its messages are. That means only the parties who are communicating can see the messages, not an outside party or even WhatsApp.
Adding this feature indicates that Facebook will be adopting a similar monetization scheme like Snapchat, by placing adds in between pieces of content that are shared by users.
Facebook already has a similar function in Instagram called “Instagram Stories” which was their first copycat feature of Snapchat. However, they have gone on to implement a similar style of the “Instagram Stories” technology into Whatsapp.
The app just recently launched so it is hard to judge how popular it is going to be. With the combined power of Instagram and Whatsapp, Facebook may just be able to rival the immense popularity that Snapchat has gained over the years.
