Facebook Stories That Last 3 Days in testing

Facebook launched Stories in June 2017 to join Instagram Stories, Messenger Day and WhatsApp Status. Stories was an ephemeral feature they cloned from Snapchat, its rival social media app. The stories posted straight from the app on top of your feed lasted for 24 hours and now Facebook wants them to stay for longer.

In a screenshot shared on Twitter by reverse-engineer Jane Wong, Facebook seems to be testing 3-day Stories.

Facebook Stories had 500 million users  with Instagram Stories,  while Snapchat had 190 million daily active users. This number could be more by now.

It’s been trying for years to push Facebook Stories, in the hopes that it will gain traction like on Instagram. But thus far those efforts have largely fallen short of expectation. Sure, 500 million Facebook users now engage with Stories every day, but with 1.66 billion total daily actives in the app, that’s, comparatively, not that much (for measure, half of Instagram’s billion users engage with Instagram Stories daily).

Can Facebook stories compete with Instagram

The Stories format in general, however, is growing, and Facebook sees it as the future of social sharing. The Social Network has repeatedly noted that Stories are on track to overtake posts in the news feed as the most common way that people share across all social apps (if they haven’t already), and given this, Facebook is keen to migrate more users across to Stories to better position itself for the next shift.

That, in Facebook’s case, means getting older users accustomed to, posting Stories. But maybe, if Stories lasted longer, that would be more appealing.  And more of their friends engaged with them, that would inspire more older users to adopt the process.

As noted, it does seem to go against the ethos that Stories was founded upon, and gained traction around. But if it works, and if Facebook can pull a few more users in, and boost those engagement stats. It makes sense that they’d at least try it.

From a marketing perspective, it seems like a risky proposition, potentially pushing too hard by leaving your promotional messages littered atop your followers’ feeds for three days at a time. But maybe it could provide more opportunity for limited time offers – maybe you could post a special deal for your followers that has to be redeemed within three days, by showing a specific Stories frame in store.

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