{"id":4377,"date":"2017-03-28T23:59:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T23:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-stories-looks-like-an-ill-fitting-mask.html"},"modified":"2017-03-28T23:59:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T23:59:21","slug":"facebook-stories-looks-like-an-ill-fitting-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-stories-looks-like-an-ill-fitting-mask.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Stories looks like an ill-fitting mask"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Facebook has finally\u00a0capped off its strategy of cloning Snapchat\u2019s USP by slotting\u00a0a camera-first, ephemeral multimedia sharing feature into\u00a0its entire social sharing estate.<\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s flicked the official switch on\u00a0a\u00a0global rollout of the feature in\u00a0the main Facebook app<\/a>,\u00a0where these disappearing Stories are pinned to contacts\u00a0above the News Feed \u2014 thereby making them almost impossible to ignore, especially given their fleeting lifespan.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month<\/a>\u00a0the social sharing giant\u00a0added a similar visual sharing feature to its Messenger app \u2014 triggering\u00a0complaints<\/a> that it was messing with the user experience.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0did the same,\u00a0in February<\/a>, with its messaging platform, WhatsApp, and also annoyed users by trying to replace a text status feature (which it\u2019s since restored<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Facebook\u00a0Snapchat cloning strategy kicked off in August 2016<\/a> when the company\u00a0debuted\u00a0the disappearing Stories format on its photo and video sharing platform Instagram, clearly\u00a0the\u00a0most natural home for the clone.<\/p>\n

And Instagram Stories has since apparently\u00a0managed to dent Snapchat\u2019s growth<\/a>, which was clearly a core strategic aim for Facebook.<\/p>\n

That and creating vastly more video inventory across Facebook\u2019s\u00a0portfolio of social\u00a0apps \u2014 into which it can inject more lucrative video ads.<\/p>\n

Training users to share the kind of content where ads can natively blend is really what Stories\u00a0is all about.<\/p>\n

All video, all video ads<\/strong><\/p>\n

None of this should be surprising. The company has previously publicly suggested its entire platform will be \u201call video<\/a>\u201d in the coming years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also taken user-hostile design decisions<\/a> such as removing the ability to send text messages from its main Facebook app. (And the aforementioned attempted rubbing out of text statuses in WhatsApp).<\/p>\n

So, basically, if you want to spam all your Facebook friends with a video of yourself wearing an animal selfie lens, Facebook will happily put all its tech at your disposal. But\u00a0if you wish\u00a0to swap a few\u00a0words with people in your Facebook\u00a0network, Facebook actively discourages that by requiring you switch to\u00a0its Messenger app to do so. It\u2019s very\u00a0clear where the company\u2019s priorities lie.<\/p>\n

Yet it remains to be seen whether\u00a0Facebook users in general are going to be flocking in droves\u00a0to engage in the kind\u00a0of throwaway visual\u00a0sharing Stories encourages \u2014 with the format effectively asking them to\u00a0repackage private lives into what amounts to a self-promoting\u00a0public \u2018ad format\u2019, complete with stickers, silly effects and so on.<\/p>\n

Thing is, for several years Facebook has had a problem with users posting fewer personal updates<\/a>. This too is\u00a0not surprising, given the\u00a0network has something of an identity crisis these days. It\u2019s certainly a far cry from the original concept of linking\u00a0university friends across a campus.<\/p>\n

Instagram is obviously the more natural home for people with a love of visual sharing generally (including those who want to build public followings for what they share). While WhatsApp\/Messenger are for\u00a0communicating\u00a0privately with friends and\/or in more bounded groups. So the question arises, who\u00a0is Facebook for?<\/p>\n

The people in the average Facebook network may well\u00a0include a number\u00a0of uni friends but also various family members, workmates across\u00a0different jobs, folks\u00a0you once met at a party, friends of friends, old school friends, professional connections and even random strangers.<\/p>\n

Such an\u00a0assortment of \u2018connections\u2019 likely does not\u00a0constitute either\u00a0a\u00a0close-knit group of friends nor a unified group of people with shared interests. The only loosely linking factor is they all\u00a0(maybe) met you at least once in your life.<\/p>\n

Nor are Facebook friends\u00a0likely to be a uniformly active network. I see huge variation\u00a0in terms of content sharing in\u00a0my own network, for example.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0will undoubtedly take a certain type of person to want to blanket broadcast Stories across such a varied and variously segmented network. (Stories can<\/em> be shared with specific Facebook friends only, but the default push for the format is clearly to encourage sharing\u00a0with all.)<\/p>\n

The mask slips<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anecdotally, a very small subset of my own Facebook connections also appear to account\u00a0for the vast majority of personal updates still being shared. (Doubtless exacerbated by the algorithmic effect of the Facebook News Feed promoting posts that\u00a0get more\u00a0engagement).<\/p>\n

Could I imagine these most actively sharing Facebook users sharing Facebook Stories? Perhaps a few\u00a0of them \u2014 so an even smaller\u00a0subset.<\/p>\n

But the handful of users I see who are still regularly sharing personal stuff on Facebook appear\u00a0to be doing so either to spark debate on a particular issue\/topic; to entertain and\/or garner public attention\/likes; or to ask for (and in so doing share) information\/advice with a\u00a0group \u2014 functions that all feel secondary as far as Stories is\u00a0concerned, given\u00a0the emphasis here is squarely on visual entertainment.<\/p>\n

I may be wrong but it\u2019s very hard to imagine serious or substantial topics being debated via Stories, what with\u00a0all the selfie lenses, movie masks, and visual effects Facebook is touting\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Stories can also be\u00a0posted to the Facebook News Feed. So there is at least the possibility that someone could use the format to try to garner comments in the usual way, by turning it into a standard piece of public Facebook content.<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t imagine how such a promotional format could sensitively touch on some of the topics I\u2019ve seen discussed across\u00a0Facebook in recent years, including very difficult issues like\u00a0child abuse, depression and marriage\u00a0breakdown. A selfie lens really isn\u2019t going to fit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/7RGv837i9X4\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has finally\u00a0capped off its strategy of cloning Snapchat\u2019s USP by slotting\u00a0a camera-first, ephemeral multimedia sharing feature into\u00a0its entire social sharing estate. Today it\u2019s flicked the official switch on\u00a0a\u00a0global rollout <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-4377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t