I Think Facebook Stories Will Fail
If you remember, I have written two blog posts (here and here) about the Stories feature that Snapchat created and then Instagram copied last year. Well now, another social medium has taken the dive…and it’s Facebook.
Honestly, I’m confused by this move. I do think that Stories are useful and beneficial for Snapchat and Instagram, because they are catering to a specific user. Instagram is for the brand, Snapchat is for the individual. Click over to one of my other two blog posts for more details.
I’m not sure who Facebook is targeting with the Stories feature, and I didn’t expect them to be used much, particularly by my friend base. To be totally honest, about three of my Facebook friends posted a Facebook Story within about a day of the feature being rolled out, and I was a bit worried about my blog post—would the masses prove me wrong? I can now report that after 48 hours since the feature was fully launched, I haven’t seen a single Facebook story in my feed.
One of the best memes I’ve seen lately is that next Microsoft Excel is going to roll out a Stories feature. This is obviously satire because Excel isn’t even a social platform, but it points to a larger message—each social media platform should differentiate itself from the other.
Facebook is for personal use sharing photos, videos, etc. with real, actual friends or people you know. Businesses find value with Facebook as well for engagement with their followers. Twitter is for personal as well as professional use, but there aren’t as many privacy restrictions. Instagram needs to have some sort of visual content. Snapchat is for sharing photos and videos between a couple of people at a time. All of these platforms are different…they have different uses, users, content—they should not all have uniformity, which is why I don’t think Facebook should have added this Stories feature. I can only hope Twitter stays far, far away from it.
So, as the title of my blog post states, I think Facebook Stories will fail, in fact I hope they will fail because I don’t see the purpose of this or understand their target user. Only time will tell though.
What do you think about the new feature? Useful or not?
