Is Facebook Copying Snapchat Features Like Stories, Filters? Messenger Boss Says No

Snapchat Stories is a feature that has taken on a life of its own. Not only has the feature made Snapchat immensely popular despite competition from other social media platforms, its popularity has pushed rivals to bring out similar features of their own.

Snapchat-rival Facebook has been accused of copying Snapchat ever since it launched the stories feature on its platform. Subsequently, it was launched on Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram.

Read: Facebook Group Chat Bots For Messenger In The Works?

David Marcus, the vice-president of Facebook's messaging products, seems to believe differently. He told Business Insider on Monday, “I think what's really interesting is looking at formats. Think about Facebook when it was built, I think Facebook probably invented the feed-based format then a lot of other companies built feed-based products ... so the Stories format is definitely one that has been pioneered by Snapchat, there's no doubt about that, but people now tend to want to use vertical video, vertical photo more and more now that they have phones with powerful cameras and screens and the consumption of media that way is very popular, so it's normal that the industry moves with these new formats as new tech has been created."

Basically, Marcus was justifying Facebook’s use of the feature by comparing it with other platforms using the feed-based style. Snapchat didn’t just “pioneer” Stories, it actually evolved into a whole platform centred on short-term videos. While Snapchat’s effort was actually centred around letting users create and publicise short-term videos, Facebook and Facebook-owned social media platforms just added the feature on top of what they already offered.

Facebook has recently focussed on photos and videos, but Marcus once again, doesn’t feel that it is inspired from Snapchat. He even stated that some of Messenger’s features were better than what Snapchat offered. "There's a big difference between capturing an image with masks or with all kind of effects and sharing it [like Snapchat does], and actually doing it in real time [like Messenger's group video tool]," he added.

But, adding so many features to Facebook offerings such as the Messenger app also means that it gets bloated. The Messenger app currently requires around 250 MB storage space on a device, which means that low-end smartphone users might run out of space very soon or will need to use Messenger Lite.

Read: Facebook Testing Merged Notifications With Messenger, Instagram

“I do think we built a lot of capabilities in a very short amount of time. We do need to rationalise and simplify and so we've started this process and last month revamped the lock and feel of Messenger, but that's like the first of many steps to come.

"Individually, those experiences are sometimes used by hundreds of millions of people, but you don't want an experience you don't want in your way of messaging, so we're doing a lot of work to do that ... if by the end of the year Messenger doesn't feel snappy and like super clean, please just hold me accountable to that,” Marcus said.