Facebook Stories, one of several Facebook-made Snapchat clones, is coming to the desktop. TechCrunch says it’s confirmed with Facebook that a desktop version of Stories is currently in testing. But while it’s supposedly only a test for now, Facebook also said that it’s planning a wider rollout in the near future. So don’t be surprised if they pop up on the site soon.
A screenshot obtained by TechCrunch shows Stories being placed in the top right corner of the News Feed, above where Facebook usually displays events and birthdays. Clicking on a story results in the screen being blacked out and the story popping up over top of everything else, as you can see in another set of screenshots obtained by the French site Siècle Digital.
It seems like almost no one uses this feature
Placing Stories to the side of the News Feed puts them slightly more out of the way than they are on mobile, where they’re always right up top when you open the app. But it also shows Facebook moving forward with a feature that people seem mostly disinterested in. I’ve seen friends of mine use Facebook Stories only a handful of times, and it kind of feels like Facebook is pushing this feature forward just because it can.
Facebook has long viewed Snapchat and the embrace of ephemeral content as a threat. But until recently, it had absolutely failed to tap into that. Only when Facebook brought a beat-for-beat Snapchat clone to Instagram and WhatsApp did it finally start to get people interested. The fact that it isn’t working on Facebook seems to suggest that the product isn’t at fault so much as the fact that people may not want to give Facebook proper any more of their life.