Last week, Facebook launched its new camera-focused update that brought along "Facebook Stories" into the main iOS application. Like Snapchat and Instagram Stories before it, Facebook Stories let users post a picture or video onto their feed, which disappears 24 hours later.
Facebook Stories at launch
Unfortunately, adoption of Facebook Stories appears to have been fairly low and users have begun to notice that the social network company is making a slight UI tweak to the feature in an attempt to boost usage (via The Verge).
When it launched, Stories showed a circle with "Your Story," a Facebook bubble that explained how to use the new feature, and then listed your friends' Stories, if there were any to show. If there were none, the top of the Facebook app contained a lot of white space (as seen in the image above).
Facebook Stories now, via @Kantrowitz
Now, the company has begun to fill out this white space in the event that none of your friends are posting to Facebook Stories with ghost-like, grayed-out profile pictures. When tapped on, the bubbles simply remark that "[Blank] hasn't added to their Story recently." Adding to your own Story remains the same, with a tap on your own profile bubble.
Although the update could be a simple UI clean-up to address the white space issue when not many Stories were up on the app, users online are looking at it as Facebook's attempt to draw their eyes to the new section of the app with pictures of their friends, convincing more people to post a Story of their own. On Instagram Stories, friends' Stories are grayed out only after you've tapped through their most recent posts. If no one has posted anything, the space remains empty.
Since Instagram Stories and Facebook's energetic push into video content, Facebook and Snapchat have remained rivals in the mobile app space. On April Fools' Day this past weekend, Snapchat finally responded to Facebook's recent glut of "Stories" updates with a copy of its own that allowed users to snap a picture using a filter that looked just like a post on Instagram.
Unfortunately, adoption of Facebook Stories appears to have been fairly low and users have begun to notice that the social network company is making a slight UI tweak to the feature in an attempt to boost usage (via The Verge).
When it launched, Stories showed a circle with "Your Story," a Facebook bubble that explained how to use the new feature, and then listed your friends' Stories, if there were any to show. If there were none, the top of the Facebook app contained a lot of white space (as seen in the image above).
Now, the company has begun to fill out this white space in the event that none of your friends are posting to Facebook Stories with ghost-like, grayed-out profile pictures. When tapped on, the bubbles simply remark that "[Blank] hasn't added to their Story recently." Adding to your own Story remains the same, with a tap on your own profile bubble.
Although the update could be a simple UI clean-up to address the white space issue when not many Stories were up on the app, users online are looking at it as Facebook's attempt to draw their eyes to the new section of the app with pictures of their friends, convincing more people to post a Story of their own. On Instagram Stories, friends' Stories are grayed out only after you've tapped through their most recent posts. If no one has posted anything, the space remains empty.
Since Instagram Stories and Facebook's energetic push into video content, Facebook and Snapchat have remained rivals in the mobile app space. On April Fools' Day this past weekend, Snapchat finally responded to Facebook's recent glut of "Stories" updates with a copy of its own that allowed users to snap a picture using a filter that looked just like a post on Instagram.
Tag: Facebook
40 comments
As we reported this morning, Apple today cut the prices of higher-end MacBook Pro SSD upgrades by up to $400, and as it turns out, there have been pricing changes to components in other Mac...
Apple's long-awaited AirPower could be launching in the near future, based on coding changes that 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo says he found in the latest iOS 12.2 beta, released yesterday...
A new Sports Illustrated article offers a look inside Apple's so-called sports surveillance room at its Results Way office complex in Cupertino, California, where a team of Apple employees have...
Alongside a refresh of the iMac and new Radeon Pro Vega graphics options for the iMac Pro, Apple today quietly lowered the price of some of the storage upgrade options for the MacBook Pro.
2TB...
With less than one week to go until Apple's "It's Show Time" media event, the company is said to still be courting major news companies to join its revamped Apple News subscription...
Apple may have plans to announce a new seventh-generation iPod touch in a press release as early as tomorrow.
MacRumors received a tip earlier this month claiming that Apple would announce new...
The Verge has obtained never-before-seen photos of a development board for the original iPhone, providing an interesting look back at the measures Apple took to ensure the smartphone remained as much...
Alongside a spec bump to standard iMac models, Apple today quietly added 256GB RAM and Radeon Pro Vega 64X graphics options to the iMac Pro.
Upgrading to 256GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 ECC memory...
