Facebook will continue to develop and improve stories (Topic)

Facebook believes that the service of the social network Stories will take root in a rapidly changing world. But just because the slideshow format will soon surpass the ribbon in popularity, it doesn't mean that people are using it everywhere.

At the end of last year, Facebook sent its team to India to find out what functionality the service should have in order to create Stories in different local languages and play on phones without a lot of internal memory.

Facebook is already testing three massive Stories features in India today and will soon be available globally. The new functionality will facilitate the appearance of messages from those users who do not want to enter text or use the keyboard in a non-native language. The innovations will also be useful for those who want to create micropodcasts, Facebook Stories will allow audio messages to combine a voice message with a colored background or a photo.

Archive for Stories

Facebook Stories will receive an archive similar to Instagram Stories that will automatically and privately save clips after they expire so that users can revisit them or share the content again in the news feed. Finally, Facebook will allow Story users to privately save their Facebook Camera clips directly to the social network servers instead of the phone's internal memory. For example, if there is not enough space on your mobile device.

“We know that accessibility and ease of posting Stories are extremely important to people around the world, especially those on slow connections,” said Connor Hayes, Director of Facebook Stories. “We're constantly working to improve the Stories experience for all types of connections. Part of the investment has already been spent on the development of our FB Lite application. ”

Facebook has a good opportunity to take advantage of the fact that Snapchat has not been able to gain a foothold in the international market so far. Due to problems with Android development and an initial reluctance to pay attention to users other than teens living in the US, Snapchat has left open opportunities for Facebook products.

Snapchat's growth has now slowed significantly, reaching 191 million daily users. At the same time, there was already a significant decrease in active users in March 2018. Meanwhile, WhatsApp Status, a clone of Snapchat Stories, has about 450 million users per day, and Instagram Stories - more than 300 million.

"When it comes to Facebook Stories, it was originally like a ghost town, but more and more of my friends are going there, thanks in part to the ability to combine information with Instagram Stories," Hayes says.

Facebook Stories has never released user statistics, and Hayes continues, "We have nothing to share yet, but the performance and functionality of Facebook Stories is encouraging and we have a clear idea of how we can best apply our experience." Since launching Stories in the mobile app in mid-2017, Facebook has been struggling to make the service work. The company believes that the number of users who see Stories as useless or unnecessary functionality will gradually dwindle.

In the global growth, Storyz Hayes cares about the fact that instead of broadcasting only the most significant events of our lives from the phone, we increasingly interrupted our daily routine and went on air.

There is another situation that Facebook is hoping to fix. “The function of saving photos and videos can be used to capture what you might want to publish later. So you don't have to immediately edit or publish them while you spend time with your friends, but instead you enjoy the moment at the concert and share it later. At the same time, you continue to actively use technology and gadgets in your life, so I hope that we can learn to record events as subtly as possible without disrupting the usual course of things. ”

Save to Facebook

The new "Save to Facebook" function creates a closed tab in the Stories creation interface. This way you can access and publish the images you have saved. Photos can be found in the "Saved" tab in the "Photos" section of your profile.

Unlike the Photo Sync function, which is no longer supported by Facebook, here you can save one image in one Story session. This will be of great help for users who do not have enough free space on their smartphone. Facebook says there are enough people around the world who need to delete the old ones to save new photos.

Facebook wants to encourage people to spend more time designing Stories. It has also become known that some people want to interact with their clips after their 24-hour expiration date. That's why the company created the Archive, a rational tool in the service of the ephemeral.

Facebook Audio Stories

During a trip to India, the team learned that photographs and videos are not the easiest way to share news. If you are in front of a camera, the camera is of poor quality, or you do not have interesting scenes to record, then Sound Stories is for you.

In fact, Facebook started testing voice clips as a feed status update back in March. “After this week's update, you will have options to add a voice message on a colored background, a photo from your camera gallery, or a saved gallery. You can also add stickers, text or scribbles, ”says Hayes. With 22 official languages and over 100 dialects in India, voice recording will be much easier than typing.

Some users will still not like Stories, which are becoming more prominent in Facebook search results. But Facebook cannot afford to look back on this matter. Stories are a kind of basis for social interaction - the largest and most immersive environment for content, thanks to which we can record our events and track what is happening with other people right on the screens of our smartphones.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook needs to make sure “ads are as good in Stories as they are in feed. We want to implement all Stories changes in a way that doesn't hurt our business. " Therefore, the Facebook Stories service needs hundreds of millions of users who live in India.

Facebook will always have a place for text content, but if a user feels the need for more emotional impact, then such a person will sooner or later turn to Stories and storytelling.

The Topic of Article: Facebook will continue to develop and improve stories.
Author: Jake Pinkman