Facebook brings Snapchat-like Stories feature to more countries [Updated]

Update 11:02 AM ET: This post originally suggested Facebook Stories was rolling out globally, but Facebook tells us it’s simply expanded its test to include more countries. We’ve update the post to reflect this information.

Facebook has brought an imitation of Snapchat’s Stories to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, but it’s also gearing up to bring it to the biggest platform of them all: Facebook itself.

The feature has been testing in Ireland since at least January, but Facebook is expanding the test to include more countries, including Chile, Vietnam, and Greece.

FACEBOOK HAS STORIES NOW????? TF NOOO pic.twitter.com/bG7vYOFy6A

— wiss (@irommans) March 15, 2017

The next Snapchat killer? Facebook has started implementing stories on their app. IG stories took most of the users of Snapchat. pic.twitter.com/jpyK7pGUhA

— Neil Enore (@neilenore) March 15, 2017

Facebook borrowing 'stories' & 'direct messaging' from instagram pic.twitter.com/fSuyaVQaW6

— pranay gupta (@pgavenger) March 15, 2017

Stories have been a huge hit on Instagram, with 150 million people already using it back in January, so it’ll be interesting to see if Facebook proper can replicate that success. It should at least make more sense than WhatsApp; Facebook is the place I go to to see what my friends are up to, so Stories should feel somewhat at home.

That said, if you’re a heavy social media user, managing all these Stories clones has got to get tiring. I use Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram regularly, but I definitely don’t want to waste time uploading images for a story to each of those platforms.

It originally appeared Facebook might be rolling out the feature globally, but it turns out it’s simply expanding the test to more countries. Still, at this point it appears it’s only a matter of time until it hits Facebook users around the world.

Via TechCrunch