Hyderabad: In a continuous effort to bring novelty to the users of Facebook, the social networking giant is experimenting with something along the lines Snapchat, only it doesn’t involve photos.
The company recently revealed online that it is testing a feature that will let a post that a user has published to expire, in a process that allows the message to disappear.
The feature has been launched selectively, as Facebook has said that setting posts to expire is ‘only available in some areas right now’.
This is considered standard, as none of the big social media websites launch a new feature without conducting extensive tests and pilot runs.
With regard to the new feature, a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable, “We’re running a small pilot of a feature on Facebook for iOS that lets people schedule deletion of their posts in advance.” The company didn’t offer further details on how the process works.
Facebook had first revealed details about this on the website’s question and answer section, which was first spotted by TheNextWeb.
The website reported that some users had been able to view post-publishing deletion options of one hour to seven days.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried its hand at entering the disappearing message space.
The Poke app, which was quietly shuttered earlier this year, was described by users as a near replica of Snapchat — the company that reportedly turned down Facebook’s $3 billion acquisition offer last year.
In recent months, the company launched a similar app, Slingshot, while Facebook-owned Instagram launched Bolt. Both apps focused, in part, on allowing users to send messages that can expire.
So far, the ephemeral messaging apps space is being dominated by Snapchat. Now it seems they have serious competition.
