Like Snapchat and Instagram before it, Facebook is testing a new Stories feature

Facebook is currently in a tough situation. Although the site still reigns as one of the most popular social networks in existence, the rise of controversy over fake news and click-baity articles have swarmed many peoples' News Feeds with nothing but links upon links to content that may or may not be true. Snapchat has been gaining quite a bit of steam lately, and this has caused for competitors to blatantly copy features that it introduces. Instagram shamelessly adopted the ability to send disappearing messages to your followers and a feature named Stories that allows you to publish photos and videos that will play in chronological order and then disappear after 24 hours (sound familiar?).

Today, it's being reported that the Facebook is testing a new feature in its iOS app over in Ireland that's called - you guessed it - Facebook Stories. Facebook Stories functions exactly how you'd expect it to, with users being able to snap photos and videos and them upload them to a separate timeline of sorts that users can view until content disappears after having been published for 24 hours. Better yet, users' Facebook Stories are displayed as circular icons at the top of the app (the exact same way they're displayed in Instagram).

We understand Facebook's eagerness to implement features that are popular on other social media sites, but we can't help but find it odd that Facebook would essentially rip off Instagram Stories (who copied Snapchat Stories) since Facebook owns Instagram. However, when you consider Facebook's previous attempts at pushing services such as live video broadcasts, introducing a feature along these lines isn't all that surprising. Original photo and video content has proved to be tremendously popular, and Facebook is going to try and cash in on that as much as it possibly can.

Facebook Stories is currently only being tested on the iOS Facebook app over in Ireland, bu t it's being reported that the feature will start making its way to other countries over the next few months. What are your thoughts on this?