Facebook competes with Snapchat's with vanishing messages in France

Facebook users in France sent vanishing messages yesterday with their smartphone Messenger application, mounting a serious challenge to Snapchat.

"We're conducting a small test in France of a feature that allows people to send messages that disappear an hour after they're sent," Facebook told AFP.

"Disappearing messages gives people another fun option to choose from when they communicate on Messenger."

Users can tap an hourglass icon on the top right of the screen in Messenger to allow them to send messages designed to vanish an hour after they are sent.

The feature is under test on versions of the Messenger application for mobile devices running Apple or Android software. If it were to prove successful, the feature is expected to be made available in other countries.

According to commentators, ephemeral messages in Messenger are a direct challenge to smartphone-messaging rival Snapchat.

The appeal of Snapchat had rested on the ability of messages to  disappear in a short time after being viewed, providing users a sense of being able to keep pictures or videos private and ephemeral.

Los Angeles-based Snapchat scaled new heights of popularity in the US, especially among teenagers, after the release of the initial app in September 2011.

Snapchat rebuffed a $3-billion takeover offer from Facebook in 2013.

In a press statement, Facebook said, ''We look forward to hearing people's feedback as they give it  a try.'' The company did not reveal if and when the feature would be available in other countries.

According to commentators, while ephemeral messaging might help Messenger, which claimed 700 million users, compete more directly with Snapchat, several top messaging apps had already introduced similar features.

For instance, Line, with 211 million users, recently introduced ''Hidden Chats,'' or encrypted messages that disappear in a short  amount of time. WeChat, the most popular messaging app in China having over a half billion users, had allowed users to recall messages since 2014.

It may be pointed out that Facebook had experiment with ephemeral messaging earlier. In December 2012, around the time that Snapchat arrived on the scene, Facebook launched Poke, a similar service that sent self-destructing photos and videos.

However, it failed to live up to expectations of emerging as a Snapchat killer.