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James Martin/CNET
Facebook said Wednesday that Facebook Stories, a timeline of photos that disappears after 24 hours, has hit a milestone of 300 million people using it everyday via its namesake social network and messaging service Facebook Messenger.
At a presentation in New York on the sidelines of Advertising Week, Facebook also said that it was opening up advertising in Facebook Stories to all its advertisers globally. It’s also going to roll out Story ads in Messenger in the coming weeks.
Snapchat pioneered the Stories format, and it quickly became one of its hits. The feature was so popular that Facebook blatantly copied it, also to great success. About a month after Snap went public, Facebook said that Instagram Stories, an almost exact copy of Snapchat Stories, was being used by 200 million people in April 2017– more than the entirety of Snapchat users. In June, Instagram Stories hit 400 million users, doubling all of Snapchat.
Wednesday, Facebook also said that it would be testing the ability to add music to Facebook Stories starting next week.
The company said that users have gravitated to Facebook Stories for three main reasons. Users like a “pull” model of sharing, where friends can opt in to seeing the Stories posts; users like creating a narrative with a beginning, middle and end throughout their day; and they value the private conversations that Stories allows, according to Facebook researcher Liz Keneski.
Originally published at 6:32 a.m. PT.
Updated at 6:43 a.m. PT: With advertising details.
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