Facebook-owned messaging services Instagram and WhatsApp now have over 300 million daily active users of their 'Story' and 'Status' features.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this during an earnings call yesterday and said they align with the company's core objective, which is to "help people connect with each other and build meaningful relationships".
"And that's why ... I emphasise products like Instagram Stories or WhatsApp Status, which are very video-based products, but they're improving social interactions. And we're going to focus a lot more on helping people share videos of their moments in their lives. Because in a lot of ways, I think if you take a video of yourself and your family out trick-or-treating, that's more engaging than a photo and a better representation of that than writing it out in text."
Picture-sharing network Instagram introduced the feature in August last year, and WhatsApp in February this year.
The features both work similarly to the original Snapchat Stories, which allow users to post pictures and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom admitted to a room of journalists when the product was launched last year in the US, that rival social network Snapchat deserves all the credit, as reported by TechCrunch.
He said sometimes tech companies are innovators and sometimes firms adopt others' formats and put their own spin on it.
Other Facebook products like Messenger and the main Facebook app have also now adopted the feature.
Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status make use of vertical videos, which some analysts were sceptical of at the time of launch because it went against the horizontal norm used in film and online.
However, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said during the same call: "People and businesses are finding creative new ways to use full-screen vertical video in [Instagram] Stories. This quarter, we gave advertisers even more flexibility in the content, format and reach of their ads in Stories."
Zuckerberg said the biggest trend over the next three years will be the growth of video.
"This goes both for sharing, where we've seen Stories in Instagram and Status in WhatsApp grow very quickly, each with more than 300 million daily actives, and also for consuming video content. We recently launched the Watch tab, where you can discover shows, follow creators, connect with people watching an episode, and join groups with people with similar interests to build community."
However, he says it is not primarily about consuming content passively.
"We want the time people spend on Facebook to encourage meaningful social interaction. So we're going to focus our products on all the ways to build community around the videos that people share and watch."
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