Facebook’s ‘Quick Updates’ on the lines of Snapchat stories gets scrapped

Instagram was at the receiving end of a lot of criticism when it blatantly launched ‘Stories’ copied from Snapchat's signature product Snapchat Stories. However, if we go by some recent reports, Facebook also had similar plans to launch its own version of Snapchat Stories, called Quick Updates, but might not do so now.

A TechCrunch report says that the Quick Updates feature which Facebook had confessed experimenting a couple of weeks ago would no longer see the light of the day.

In the experiment part, Facebook even made Quick Updates available to a selected test group of users.

Don't worry we will give you some pieces on the ceased "experiment". With its own design style, Quick Updates was a special place to share within the Facebook app but outside of the News Feed. Accessible from a button at the top of the feed, Quick Updates would have let people share 24-hour disappearing photos and videos with overlaid text. These posts wouldn’t appear in the feed or in people’s profiles. You don’t need us to tell you from where it came.

A Facebook spokesperson said, "Quick Update was something we were going to test. It’s an idea we’re not pursuing anymore. We often conduct small tests of new feature concepts, and this particular experience was an old test feature that was shown to some people. We don’t have any plans to launch it more broadly.”

Even if the product was launched, it would not have been the first time that Facebook tried to imitate Snapchat, since 2013, when Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat. In past, Facebook had introduced one-hour self-destructing message feature in Messenger. Other features including Poke app which allowed people to send 10-second photos or video messages or Slingshot app which enabled people to send messages to multiple people at once are all part of Facebook's controversial past of copying Snapchat.