2016 was the year that Facebook recognized the threat Snapchat poses to its core business, and started relentlessly cloning the app's core features. It makes sense considering Facebook unsuccessfully tried to acquire Snapchat in 2013; CEO Evan Spiegel rebuffed a $3 billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg.
The result is that Instagram, Messenger, Facebook's main app, and even WhatsApp look much more like Snapchat than they did one year ago. And Zuckerberg now believes that the future of how people communicate on Facebook will be through the camera — a concept Snapchat pioneered.
Here are all of the ways that Facebook copied Snapchat in 2016:
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The first indication that Facebook was wading into Snapchat's territory was in March when it acquired the app MSQRD, which lets you swap faces with goofy effects, similar to Snapchat's unique filters called "lenses."
Source: Business Insider
Then, in April, Facebook added scannable Snapchat-like QR codes for profiles in Messenger.
Source: Business Insider
Disappearing messages were added as a test to Messenger in May — a feature Facebook has yet to roll out globally.
Source: Business Insider
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