In a bid to boost its usage among the masses, Facebook is combining its Snapchat Stories clone with features that Snapchat can’t match.
Facebook Groups users and Events will be able to contribute to a Facebook Story visible to the rest of the members of the group and moderated by the admins.
The service is set to start from today.
No doubt the service could be fun for parties, weddings, meetups and more festivals and events.
Actually, these collaborative Stories will work much like a private hashtag so multiple people can add to its content but only those involved can see it.
Connor Hayes, Facebook product manager, said that the features “Give multiple people the opportunity to tell a Story from multiple different angles.”
People could see Stories on their Event and Group pages, and atop their News Feed with this service.
People will be able to post while inside Events and Groups, or get the option to share there content on the Facebook Stories share sheet.
Snapchat owns its private groups feature, but this is more akin to a group chat thread people can send Stories to. Facebook is going to enable Groups around hobbies, ideologies, professions, and locations to create niche Stories content that might not appealing to friends but is appeal to fellow members with a particular interest.
At the same time, Facebook is also launching Facebook Stories for Facebook Lite, its stripped app for the developing world.
From now on, users on the low-data-usage version of main app of Facebook can only view Stories, but according to the company posting is coming soon.
The announcements come alongwith a huge overhaul of Facebook’s Stories products. It is replacing Messenger Day with Facebook Stories, and is going to sync both cross-posting and viewing.
It is also killing off the Facebook Direct ephemeral messaging feature for handling Stories replies and messages through Messenger.
Facebook Stories posts would follow rules set by admins of the groups for the standard wall posts. So admins could either allow posts from everyone and delete ones they do not like, or they can need approvals of posts.
And for encouraging people to kick off a Story, Facebook will show an open bubble atop the News Feed for the users to add to if they are RSVP’d for an event happening right now.
Facebook has gone beyond copying Snapchat, by integrating Stories with Events and Groups. And Facebook is proving that it is serious about Stories for long-run. Rather than only bolting on Stories, it is intermingling the feature across the Facebook app. That can create sharing opportunities that Snapchat lacks, spur usage of the app by different demographics and encourage original content sharing instead of the generic link sharing.
