Facebook Wants Messenger To Be The Ultimate App Replacement

As first noticed and reported by BuzzFeed, Facebook is now testing out a new feature on Messenger where people can send messages that would self-destruct and vanish after an hour.

Unlike rival Snapchat, where messages disappear shortly after being viewed, the messages in the Facebook Messenger app test will stick around an hour before they disappear.

The feature, which deletes text and photos one hour after they’re sent, is now being trialled in France. The spokesperson said that Messenger users within a specific chat will be affected by the “disappearing messages” feature. According to a statement released by David Marcus, who is the VP of Facebook’s messaging products, the social media site will be launching a new feature known as Message Requests via Facebook Messenger.

According to the USA Today, the feature is activated by tapping an hourglass icon at the top right of the chat window and a second tap will disable the feature off allowing the message to remain in the chat box. Zuckerberg’s company is looking forward to hearing your feedback, and so are we. True, only users in France are able to verify the intriguing gimmick, but if all goes well – fingers crossed – the rest of us will soon see it, too.

Alongside read receipts, disappearing messages are another effort by Facebook to make online chat seem more like real-life conversations.

Facebook is working on offering new features for the Messenger app and has green-lighted the use of stickers on the app in the process. The instant messaging service also added a Snapchat-like disappearing messages feature.

Facebook is ramping up a challenge to Snapchat by making ephemeral messages an option in Messenger. Especially, Teenagers preferred this Snapchat messaging app. This is Facebook’s Businesses on Messenger layer to its messaging app, which effectively speeds up messaging. This feature will only work in case you receive a message from someone whom you are not friends with on the social network. Although the experiment is still limited in France, Facebook announced that it will eventually be made available to other countries.

Together, the five biggest ones – Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat and Line – account for more than 3 billion accounts.