It appears Facebook is not giving up on the Facebook Story. The social media giant is planning on expanding the vanishing pictures and videos to be visible on its desktop version as well as mobile.
Facebook Stories, the outrageous clone of the original Snapchat format, currently sits above the newsfeed in a central position on the Facebook app. The feature will now be moved to the right-hand side of the screen on the desktop, becoming the first time Stories has appeared on non-mobile devices.
Read more: Where Instagram goes next: Kevin Systrom on copying rivals, VR and cutting off dead weight
When a user's profile picture is clicked on, the Story will pop up, blacking-out the background of the desktop, as screenshots sourced by the French site Siécle Digital demonstrate. Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that stories on the desktop is still a test but said it would be rolled out to a wider audience in the near future.
Since Snapchat launched the 'Stories' format, Facebook's companies have been quick to adapt the feature for their own platforms. Instagram was the first to rip-off the Snapchat feature in the summer of 2016. Since then, Instagram Stories has grown to over 250 million daily users, crushing Snapchat’s 166 million.
Facebook also joined in at the beginning of 2017, hoping to steal some of the success of Instagram (as did WhatsApp and Messenger). Outside of the Facebook companies, Tinder has introduced a feature that's similar to Stories. However, as the year has developed it has become clear that Instagram is now the chosen platform for users to share their visual communication.
Unsurprisingly, TechCrunch reports that over half of businesses have made a story with Instagram over the past year while this number dwindles on Facebook.
This is nowhere more evident than in the graveyard of Facebook’s story bar. In April 2017, instead of a blank space where stories should be, Facebook introduced blurred out, ghosted icons of your friends. An awkward reminder of its continued unpopularity. Still, an amusing irony considering the icon of the bruised Snapchat is a ghost.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
