Facebook started rolling out the ‘Stories’ feature on its platform in 2017, after it garnered a lot of acclaim on Snapchat. Since then, Facebook has been distributing it to all its applications, including Instagram, WhatsApp and even Messenger. And looks like Facebook is looking to bank on the success of stories even further, as it tests stories that could last for upto 3 days.
The news was uncovered by famous reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who has rung the bell on many undisclosed features in similar fashion. She shared a screenshot on her twitter feed, in which she wrote, “Facebook is working on Stories that last 3 days.”
The screenshot attached to this tweet had a friendly menu, with some unfamiliar additions. On the top half of the image was the option to limit who can view these stories: Public, Friends, Custom and Hide Story From. This feature already exists on the platform and hence does not warrant any major attention. However, underneath it was a new menu, to choose how long the story that is about to be posted will stay up.
In said menu, was the option to choose the standard 24 hour limit, or the new 3 day limit that Facebook is testing out.
Facebook is working on Stories that last 3 days pic.twitter.com/6S5sLpMrzA
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 15, 2020
The feature is not out yet, and was uncovered by Jane using her signature reverse engineering capabilities. However, it might be scheduled to arrive on the platform in some time.
This is not a surprise, as Facebook had announced in 2018 (during their earning’s call) that it is working on developing the Stories feature further. The company was highly optimistic about the future of this feature since it had been huge a success. To put things in perspective, the Facebook family, which includes Facebook’s main app, Instagram and WhatsApp, had around 500 million users that used its Stories feature. Snapchat, the company where the idea originally came from, had around 190 million daily active users. The number might be more now.
This also works well for monetisation opportunities for the feature, as the company has already managed to gather about 3 million paid users for advertisements using its stories. Longer stories might entice companies to spend more money in advertising through this medium in hopes of higher returns.
