Facebook tests vanishing messages

Starting today, we’re conducting a small test in France of a feature that allows people to send messages that disappear an hour after they’re sent. The test comes merely days after Instagram, a Facebook-owned company, launch what is essentially its version of Snapchat Stories.

Tapping an hourglass icon on the highest proper of the display in Messenger will permit customers to ship messages created to fade an hour after they’re despatched.

Facebook is going head to head with Snapchat with the introduction of ephemeral messaging to the Messenger app. Android and iOS users in France now have the option to test this feature on their respective apps. Poke only lasted a few months before Facebook pulled it.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has experimented with ephemeral messaging. The message at top reads “you have activated disappearing messages”.

Facebook tells Buzzfeed it may be looking to roll the feature out widely. We look forward to hearing people’s feedback as they give it a try. If it proves successful, the feature would likely be made available in other countries.

Just as the vanishing-message smartphone app confirmed that six billion videos are viewed daily – a three-fold surge from early this year – word spread Wednesday that one of its investors slashed the value of its holding in the startup by 25 percen… On the long run, however, the social network giant might have much bigger plans for this Snapchat-like feature.

Disappearing conversations would put Facebook head to head against messaging rival Snapchat.