Valued at $350 Billion in total, Facebook is considered as a shark in the tank of social media firms. Time and again, this shark has tried to gobble up a little competition by the name of Snapchat.
Though Snapchat does not even have a total net worth of 10 percent of that of Facebook, some of the features really stand out from all its competition in the market and are hence gaining rapid traction for the company.
Facebook has tried to take over Snapchat in the past with a $3 Billion offer on the table. This concluded in their disappointment when Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel, rejected the offer in 2013.
Since then, Facebook has repeatedly tried to match the features on Snapchat and hence put it out of business.
Here is a list of attempts that the company has made to engulf such features in its list of services:
1. POKE: Facebook rolled out an app in 2012 by the name of ‘Poke’. Poke allowed the users to send messages to each other which vanished within 10 seconds of opening it. The app could not gain much traction at the time and was put out of service in 2014.
2. In 2014, Facebook again launched a standalone app by the name of ‘Slingshot’. The app allowed users to send across messages and photos to each other and have them self-destruct after a given time. This app again was shut down in 2015.
3. As a new feature for its popular app ‘Instagram’, Facebook launched 'Instagram stories', allowing users to photos that self-destructed after 24 hours.
4. Instagram ‘Quick Updates’: This feature was tested to make the regular news feed on Instagram self-destructive, i.e. the feeds for one day will not be available after a given time period. The company never launched this feature after testing.
5. In its most recent attempt, Facebook launched 'Instant Video' feature on its messenger app. This feature allowed the users to view and share video feeds with each other.
6. Facebook started testing its ‘Messenger Day’ in Poland this year in a bid to capture user base in countries where Snapchat is not very popular at the moment. ‘Messenger day’ allows people to share filtered photos and videos which disappear in 24 hours, exactly like Snapchat.
There are a few reasons why Snapchat holds its ground even today after facing competition from one of its fierce contenders. Very first reason why the youth relate to it is that it is a private platform as there are no likes or comments.
This eliminates the ‘performance anxiety’ that many users face while posting anything on the social media.
Also, knowing that the content posted online will not stay there for long gives a sense of security to the users which is absent in most of the other social media platforms.
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