Yet another Facebook product has cloned Snapchat's Stories format

Facebook has aimed its sights at Snapchat again: WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has also cloned Snapchat's popular stories format and will use it to replace its old text-based status messages.

The feature started rolling out to WhatsApp's billion-plus users yesterday on Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone.

Post a story and it shows up in a new "status" tab where your contacts can view it for the next 24 hours. You and your friends can respond to each others' updates directly from the post.

Following Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook itself, WhatsApp becomes the fourth Facebook product to clone Snapchat Stories - although Facebook and Messenger are still testing the features in some countries. WhatsApp is the second Facebook product to roll out the feature globally.

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“When WhatsApp launched nearly 8 years ago (on Feb. 24th), it started as an app for sharing status updates, where people could type a short line of text to let their friends know what they were up to,” the company said in a blog post. “When we noticed people were using the feature to communicate in real time, we redesigned WhatsApp as a messaging app.”

From Facebook's end, adding this feature to WhatsApp is just another way to blunt Snapchat's growth in emerging markets where the ephemeral messaging app has yet to establish dominance.

This way, Facebook is lowkey forcing Snap Inc. to find new ways to grow its business - after all instagram Stories was already doing 150 million daily active users just four months after launch.

WhatsApp Status is just another thing for Snap Inc. to worry about as it prepares for its IPO secheduled for March 2, 2017.