I think it's more Facebook wants what Snap's got. Snap has visibility into bits of time social graph Facebook doesn't, and the latter doesn't like that. Vindictiveness isn't a good long-term strategy; ruthless territoriality is.
Have to agree with the conclusion of this Guardian article that has documented the phenomenon:
"With attempts six and seven coming in the same month, and eight, nine, and 10 coming in the same weekend, it’s clear that Facebook’s attacks on Snapchat are accelerating. Some back-of-the-envelope maths suggests that at the current rate of acceleration, there will be more Facebook clones of Snapchat than there are atoms in the universe by the year 2030. And yet Snapchat will probably still be more popular among teens."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/31/facebook-...
You know, you can do both. Even though FB can get its users make stories in its apps, the teens/millenial audience which Snapchat has is what FB want.
Instagram Stories is FB's direct shot at Snapchat and from my understanding, it is doing pretty well and growing.
WhatsApp is barely used in the US but heavily used outside the US. I think WhatsaApp Status is FB's play to bring Snapchat to the millions of users not in the US - stifling Snap's international growth through network effects.
My bet is they'll add SMS ( maybe + RCS) support to WhatsApp soon as well and then more slowly go with the WeChat model of becoming your everything app.
Here in India I used to think it's only WhatsApp pretty much then I realised there are many apps which have substantial user-bases e.g. hike messenger (hike.in). I was surprised that Viber still has decent number of users in India and then of course there is Fb Messenger.
Depending on the which of those end points is taken, either all teens, late teens, or no teens are Millenials.
[0] A (probably incomplete) breakdown is available on Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials#Date_and_age_ran...
It got shortened... to just "app".
But, to be honest, I think this is a horrible move. Make clear that WP will move more in the direction to become more Social. I have thousands of contacts saved that I have no intention of having any social interaction that is not straightforward. My mechanic, the person who cuts my hair, my gardener, a girl I met yesterday, the person I sold my car to. With all these, I interacted using Whats app. But with none of them, I want to share what I share with my friends, my relatives etc.
My facebook is frozen exactly because of this. WP, especially its groups, was a territory of segregated interaction, this was spectacular. Facebook inc could kill this by including functions like that.
I remember when MSN, Skype, and others message programs have tried put a feed inside their app. They failed.