Facebook Stories hit 300 million daily users. Here come more ads

Not bad for a Snapchat copycat.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter

Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.

Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials

Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)

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Joan E. Solsman

Sept. 26, 2018 6:43 a.m. PT

2 min read

stories-archive-all-screens-entry-point — Facebook Stories has quickly caught on.
Facebook

Facebook Stories, a timeline of photos that disappears after 24 hours, has hit a milestone of 300 million people using it every day via its namesake social network and messaging service Facebook Messenger, the company said Wednesday.

At a presentation in New York on the sidelines of Advertising Week, Facebook also said that it's opening up advertising in Facebook Stories to all its advertisers globally. It's also going to roll out Stories ads in Messenger in the coming weeks.

Snapchat pioneered the Stories format, and it quickly became one of its hits. The feature was so popular that Facebook blatantly copied it, also to great success. About a month after Snap went public, Facebook said that Instagram Stories, an almost exact copy of Snapchat Stories, was being used by 200 million people in April 2017-- more than the entirety of Snapchat users. In June, Instagram Stories hit 400 million users, doubling all of Snapchat.

On Wednesday, Facebook also said that it'll be testing the ability to add music to Facebook Stories starting next week.

The company said people have gravitated to Facebook Stories for three main reasons. Users like a "pull" model of sharing, where friends can opt in to seeing Stories posts; users like creating a narrative with a beginning, middle and end throughout their day; and they value the private conversations that Stories allows, according to Facebook researcher Liz Keneski.

Originally published Sept. 26 at 6:32 a.m. PT.
Update, 6:43 a.m. PT: Adds advertising details.

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