The social giant Facebook has a lot of features. As one of the most complex social media around, it still wants to make a huge gap between the competition. To do that, copying popular features from competitors is the thing to do.
Facebook has been "borrowing" Snapchat's features, and has been introducing them to its family: both Instagram and Messenger have Stories. Facebook has that instant-camera selfie. And it might have been predicted that WhatsApp will soon follow.
On September 4th, 2016, the Facebook-owned popular WhatsApp is now having its own creative tools.
WhatsApp users can now be able to add overlaid text with multiple colors and fonts, drawings and emojis to photos and videos they shoot or upload. These allow WhatsApp to have a better visual communication where users can simply add captions, highlight certain things, or just putting more fun into a scene with doodles.
Snapchat was seen as the one that popularized this style of chat. As a messenger for teenager and a like, the feature can make a previously dull messages to be more vivid and appealing. Facebook saw this opportunity and now it's the time to borrow it.
To use the feature, users just need to capture a photo or video, and draw on the image - just like Snapchat. The emojis are also similar since they're taken from the open-source Twemoji that is also used by Twitter and Snapchat.
The update isn't stopping there. What's more about WhatsApp is its new camera feature that can make a better use of the front-facing camera.
Front-facing cameras on mobile devices usually have lower resolution and lower light sensitivity. The result is inevitable: low-light shoots won't appeal as much as when they're taken using the rear-facing camera. To make matters worse, front-facing camera doesn't have dedicated flash, making selfies at low-light situation unpleasant.
WhatsApp new feature makes use of this weakness by brightening the images using its pseudo-flash. As a result, photos taken at night or at low light environment will be better lit by the white blinking screen.
Also included in the camera upgrades is the ability to zoom just by sliding the finger up and down. Users can also quickly switch between front and rear-facing cameras by double tapping.
While Snapchat is a competitor to Facebook's WhatsApp. Snapchat is having more than 150 million daily users with 60 million of them in the U.S. and Canada. But WhatsApp that boasts more than a billion monthly users, have a more diverse users.
WhatsApp users are scattered to almost everywhere, especially in the developing markets of the world. Many of those countries have yet to see Snapchat's adoption, and by making this update final, WhatsApp can have an advantage of the market when Snapchat eventually arrives there.
Here Facebook that knows how competitive WhatsApp is, is confident that the messaging juggernaut can approach a wider range of market in a way easier than Snapchat.
So yes, Facebook and its products are copying the trend. And by having a more widespread popularity, the social giant and all of its family members could be seen as the firsts to offer those new features at scale in the market. This attempt could make them succeed better than having the best features but showing up late (Snapchat).
Howeverm Evan Spiegel's Snapchat still poses a kind of existential threat that somehow won't just go away. Snapchat's growth is alarming, and the company's philosophy in more about sharing rough and on-the spot-images. These are Snapchat's advantages despite being relentlessly "bullied".
Related: Facebook, Instagram Vs. Snapchat: Copying To Eliminate The Threats