Sunday, February 5, 2017

Another Day, Another Attempt to Unseat Snapchat: Facebook Unveils Messenger Day



“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

This is a lesson Facebook has perfected over the last year as it continues to launch products to compete with Snapchat, the app it tried and failed to purchase back in 2013.

The battle over the disappearing social media story continued yesterday with Facebook’s launch of Messenger Day. Messenger Day works like Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories, and WhatsApp Status: Users share photo and video messages embellished with text, drawings, filters, and emojis with friends that disappear after 24 hours.

As of yesterday, the new feature was being gradually rolled out to all iOS and Android Messenger apps. In this post, we’ll cover what Messenger Day is all about, how to use it, and how this announcement changes the ephemeral messaging competition heating up between Snapchat and Facebook.
What Is Messenger Day?
Messenger Day lets users curate a slideshow of photos and videos that's visible to their friends on Facebook Messenger for 24 hours before it disappears. As the name suggests, this rollout is a part of Messenger, Facebook’s standalone messaging app used by one billion people worldwide.

Messenger’s in-app camera lets users add text, drawings, stickers, emojis, filters, and lenses to photos and videos before adding them to their Messenger Day or sending them to individual friends or groups. Here’s what Messenger users can tailor images to look like with the camera:

Before we teach you how to use Messenger Day, here’s the lowdown on what it’s all about and how it’s similar to other ephemeral messaging apps and products out there.
Commonalities

Like Snapchat Stories and WhatsApp Status, Messenger Day displays users’ ephemeral messages in a vertical list. From there, users can click on specific photos and videos they want to check out, or they can go down the line to watch all of the images at once.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what each of these three looks like:



Sources: Guiding Tech; Facebook

Pretty similar, right?

The cameras for each of these apps and features have different lens and filter styles, but for the most part, photo editing abilities are remarkably similar, too. Each of these apps let users send disappearing messages privately to individuals and groups, in addition to sharing on their Story, Status, or Day.

Now, let’s dive into how Messenger Day is different from other apps.

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