Emulating Snapchat? Facebook launches Stories on Android, iOS

The move, which will soon follow in most countries, comes after Facebook-owned picture sharing social network Instagram launched Stories in late August.

The move, which will soon follow in most countries, comes after Facebook-owned picture sharing social network Instagram launched Stories in late August.

Facebook's emulation of Snapchat seems to continue as the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company has launched a new feature called Stories on the app's iOS and Android version in a test run in Ireland.

The move, which will soon follow in most countries, comes after Facebook-owned picture sharing social network Instagram launched Stories in late August.

Just like Snapchat Stories, Facebook Stories also lets you put up photos and video montages, with filters, which will disappear after 24 hours. The implementation on the front-end is quite similar to how it's seen on Instagram — a feed of circular icons showing whose Facebook Story was last updated.

Read: Forget video ads on Facebook, Instagram debuts full-screen ads in Stories

Facebook had long tried to buy Snapchat but has been unsuccessful. "Facebook has long been the place to share with friends and family, but the way that people share is changing in significant ways. The way people share today is different to five or even two years ago — it's much more visual, with more photos and videos than ever before. We want to make it fast and fun for people to share creative and expressive photos and videos with whoever they want, whenever they want," Facebook told TechCrunch.

Facebook has not said anything about a desktop version of the feature. But Facebook copying nearly all Snapchat features doesn't bode well for the smaller company as it is headed for an IPO this year.

Read: Instagram gets better on iPhone 7, 7 Plus

Some of Facebook's products to compete with Snapchat such as Poke, Slingshot have been laid to rest. Facebook has also went ahead and acquired animated filters company MSQRD, to compete with Snapchat's animated filters. Facebook added the Messenger Codes to Messenger, a feature similar to Snapcode which lets you add users by scanning the Snapcode. It had launched Flash, a separate app for emerging markets with animated filters as the focus area.