Facebook is taking another stab at ephemeral messaging with a new test feature that allows users to have their posts disappear after a certain period of time.
The feature was first noticed by TheNextWeb, which reported that Facebook is letting users choose to have their posts erased after an hour, three hours, six hours, 12 hours, a day, two days or seven days.
Facebook confirmed the report, saying that the new feature is limited only to iOS users in New Zealand, where the social network and other technology companies have done testing for their new products and services in the past.
"We're running a small pilot of a feature on Facebook for iOS that lets people schedule deletion of their posts in advance," says Facebook in a statement.
It is unclear, however, if the disappearing posts will actually disappear from Facebook's servers, considering the social network's reputation for amassing huge chunks of personal user data for its own purposes. TheNextWeb reports "it can take up to 90 days" for ephemeral posts to disappear from Facebook's offline backups and logs.
While a new disappearing posts feature on Facebook could be useful for users who post time-sensitive posts like "I'm selling tickets for Saturday's big concert," it is more likely part of Facebook's efforts to lure back the teenage into a user base plagued with slowing growth. Users in the age range of 18 to 34 years old are increasingly switching over to Snapchat, an app that lets users send photos and videos that vanish a short time after being sent.
In 2013, Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, who was then 23-years-old, made headlines when he did a Mark Zuckerberg and boldly turned down the #3 billion Facebook offered to acquire the start-up. Zuckerberg also became famous for turning down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo. Just a year after Spiegel's famous snub of Facebook, the company soared to a $10 billion valuation, with legendary Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers investing $20 million in the company. Snapchat is now the third most popular app for users 18 to 34 years old behind Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. And with Facebook's growth in a slowdown, it's easy to see why the social network is scared of Snapchat.
Facebook has previously launched its own ephemeral messaging standalone app called Slingshot, which allows users to send and receive disappearing photos to their friends. However, there's a catch. For users to be able to view a photo and videos, they have to "sling" back a photo of themselves too. And while Slingshot is still available as a free app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, it hasn't enjoyed the same popularity as Snapchat.
Earlier this year, Facebook also killed another disappearing messages app called Poke, which critics have widely panned as nothing more than a Snapchat clone.
