Facebook Launches Messenger Day, a Snapchat Stories Clone

March 9, 2017

As if Instagram’s Snapchat feature cloning was not enough, Facebook is doing the same thing with Messenger. We should have seen it coming.

Today the company announced the launch of Messenger Day, a way to share content in a manner strikingly similar to Stories in Snapchat. Days last 24 hours and can be made pretty with filters and stickers (sound familiar yet?).

Quoth Stan Chudnovsky, Head of Product for Messenger:

Open Messenger, and tap on the camera highlighted with a sun to celebrate this launch. Snap a quick selfie or take a photo or video of what’s around you. To add art and effects, tap the smiley face icon in the top right and then tap to add to your photo or video. You can also add text over your images by tapping the “Aa” icon, and you can overlay a drawing by tapping the squiggly line in the top right corner.

Again: sound familiar?

“COmmunication is becoming more visual than ever, and people want lightweight, easy ways to share throughout the day,” says Facebook. “Messenger Day is a continuation of Facebook’s strategy to put video first across all apps and services.”

It’s a particularly damaging blow to Snap—who just went public last week—because Messenger has well over one billion active users, far more than Snapchat or Instagram has.