Back in 2012 there were rumors about Facebook working on Snapchat-like app for sending self-destructible timed messages, but it didn’t happen. Last year BlackBerry launched Timed messages feature for BBM that lets users set the time the message should be displayed to other users before it disappears. According to Buzzfeed, Facebook is testing a similar feature for the Facebook Messenger to give an option for the users to have their messages disappear one hour after sending them.
This feature is currently available only in France, but Facebook says that it may roll out the feature to other countries soon during the testing phase. According to USA Today, anyone in a chat can enable or disable the feature at any time from within the thread by just tapping the hourglass icon. Only those in the specific conversation will be affected by the disappearing messages.
This feature might attract more users to the Facebook Messenger. Microsoft even released ephemeral messaging app WindUp for Windows Phone last year, but it didn’t release the app for other platforms. We will have to wait for Facebook to officially announce when it plans to roll out the new feature for all the users globally.