Facebook Stories adds group chat and reactions
Now you'll be able to "like" and "love" Facebook Stories -- which haven’t been as popular as the company’s other Snapchat knockoffs.
Facebook Stories is adding new features, like being able to see if you got a Messenger reply without leaving Stories.
Facebook is trying to get more people to interact with the Stories feature in its main app.
The social network on Wednesday announced a few new features for the service, which lets people post a string of photos and videos that automatically disappear after 24 hours.
Now, if you reply to a Story, you'll be able to add other people to the reply, which creates a new group thread in Facebook Messenger, the social network's chat app. You'll also be able to see if you got any Messenger replies to your Story without leaving the Story itself.
Facebook is also adding the ability for people to reply with stickers and "reactions" -- the "like," "love," and "sad" buttons you usually see on Facebook.
Facebook copied the Stories format from rival Snapchat and added it to all its apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook itself. Stories on Instagram and WhatsApp are wildly popular, with 300 million and 450 million daily users, respectively. (That eclipse's Snapchat's 191 million users for the entire app.)
But Facebook Stories hasn't fared as well. In May, the company said the feature had 150 million users. The company said at the time it will start testing ads on the feature in the US, Mexico in Brazil. These are 5- to 15-second skippable video ads.
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