Who knew Snapchat ever pose as a threat to the social media giant; but it is and Facebook needs to be prepared.
Facebook Inc. up till now had no real threat in the market, however, Snapchat with its latest features have signaled the social media giant, that it is here to stay and is not just a play toy anymore. Last month, the social media network bought Masquerade -an app quite identical to the video messaging app, Snapchat and in retaliation the video messaging app bought Bitstrips that gained popularity on Facebook in 2013.
The fact Facebook has been striving to be a leader in the messenger and chat market for a few years now; and the best way to tackle competition in the specific market has been to buy to the competitor. As for Snapchat, before this, the social media giant had not even thought twice about Snapchat – but should it be worried now? Now, that the app has launched features that have been quite prominent on Facebook’s messenger and it is no longer just ‘any other’ app, we believe that the social media website should feel threatened.
Snapchat’s 2.0 upgrade caught Facebook’s eye; the app is now directly a threat to the social media’s messenger. Vanity Fair stated that the upgrade 2.0 lets snapchat users make voice calls, send video and audio messages, and along with that it also allows users to have a private video chat session; users can choose the people they want to talk to and simply starting shooting the video. The upgrade also has over 200 new stickers (as emoticons is the new internet language); these stickers are quite different from the ones that are available on WhatsApp and Facebook messenger however they seem very appealing.
On the contrary, Facebook, in an effort to tackle this new move by the video and photo messaging app, is working on a new feature of the messenger by the name of Secret Conversations. No other details regarding this feature have been made available or announced by the social media site currently however it will interesting to find out what the company has in store for its users now. The name does suggest that the new feature could be something Snapchat’s disappearing ability – maybe the messages might disappear after 10 seconds, who knows!
Vanity Fair is stated that if this new Secret Conversation feature is not something close to Snapchat’s disappearing feature, then this feature could simply mean that the social media network is working on some heavy encryption to keep user’s conversations and chats private.
Yet another concern that the social media website has regarding Snapchat is advertisers. To make money, Facebook has heavily relied on advertisements however now that Snapchat is making an impact, many advertiser might prefer to go towards that app as it will be able to interact with customers in a more social way. Snapchat is providing an alternative to advertisers in place of TV ads however if it wants to go forward with that, it will need to open up to the kind of tracking and targeting that Facebook provides to its advertisers.
However, we do believe that will not be much an issue for Facebook due to its huge customer base; its current billions of users already overshadows Snapchat users all across the world. The company will be working on keeping its user’s attention towards itself which can provide to be a difficult task for the company of that magnitude though not impossible.
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