A look into Messenger Day & what might happen next — Part 1
After months of testing in different countries Facebook has finally launched it’s “day” (stories) feature to everyone on the Messenger App.
I have been using it for a couple of days now and noticed some interesting takeaways.
- Demographic — This is not a massive surprise as Snapchat is typically has younger users, but sharing your “day” can help your story reach a new audience of people you might not directly interact with otherwise.
- UI & Camera — As opposed to the implementation on Instagram Stories, Messenger has taken a slightly different approach perhaps due to the sheer number of users on the platform there are a number of ways to capture the moment. You can swipe down to reveal the camera OR tap the circle in the tab bar OR tap on “Add to your day”. They really don’t want you to miss out!
- Lenses — When you compare directly with Snapchat something that seems missing is lenses but this is not quite the case. At the moment if you tap the :) Icon (top right) it will open an overlay filled with different types of “stickers” and almost lense-like enhancements. They don’t seem to alter the colour of the image/video itself just yet.
- Notifications — Wow, this was one of the first things I noticed. Once you first post to your day Facebook sends out a notification to a chunk of your friends to say you are sharing your day. Not only that but after getting my first view another notification arrived to say “Your day is getting views”. To round this all off another notification was sent just before my story expired which is very different to Snapchat who only sent notifications for direct or chat based actions.
What next?
As someone who has spent a lot of time making stories on Snapchat the area that’s lacking for me at the moment is being able to save my story. On Snapchat I have memories which easily lets my story be automatically saved for me to then do as I please. So Facebook before I can start to spend more time sharing my day — fix this 😎
At the moment this is only for your friends on Facebook so businesses cannot share their day with you which may almost be a throwback to the early days of Facebook without all the clutter (and ads). It will be interesting to see how this evolves as it could be a massive opportunity for marketing.
Are you a storyteller! I’m starting a podcast exploring what makes an engaging story. Would you like to be involved? Reach out (Twitter @russellbarnard or russell@snappd.tv) — Find out more here
