Facebook had chased Snapchat for a long time. In 2013, it tried to acquire Snapchat for a price of $3 billion, but that bid was turned down. At that time, Snapchat considered themselves to be worth more than $6 billion. However, the company has grown significantly in the last four years and Snapchat’s valuation this year has exceeded $20 billion mark.
After failing to acquire the popular messaging app, Facebook launched Slingshot in 2014. However, Slingshot was a massive failure, and the app was forced to go off the market at the end of 2015. After successive failures of launching Snapchat clones, Facebook has changed its strategy to combat Snapchat. It has been integrating stories and filters in the Facebook app, Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram.
One of the major attractions of using Snapchat is the streak feature. A streak takes place when two users send snaps to each other for more than three days continuously. Maintaining streaks with other users is what ensures the continuous and daily usage of Snapchat. The significance of this streak is represented by a number and emoji beside the user in the messaging interface of Snapchat. A Snapchat streak breaks if both users do not send snaps to each other within a 24-hour period. The app even warns users when a streak is about to expire to help users maintain the streak.
Facebook is ready to attack Snapchat’s uniqueness once again as it is testing the streak feature in Messenger on limited accounts. Some users reported on Twitter that Messenger is showing messages of encouraging them to keep on chatting with other users to maintain a streak. This streak was also represented by an emoji beside their name. Industry experts predict the streak feature could also appear in Instagram and Whatsapp as well.
