Everybody’s favourite chat platform WhatsApp turns eight this Friday, reminding us of a time when it was the only app that allowed cross-platform messaging beyond iMessage and Blackberry Messenger. Since then, WhatsApp has built itself to become a mainstay on every smartphone user’s home screen, with 1.2 billion active users on a daily basis.

With that in mind, its new feature will probably put Snapchat in a very uneasy position, just days before its initial public offering next week.

According to Vulcan Post, WhatsApp is the latest of Facebook’s subsidiaries to clone the popular Snapchat story function, which allows users to post annotated videos or images which disappears after 24 hours.

Image: WhatsApp

While Instagram placed its Stories function at the top of its main page, the feature will be used to replace WhatsApp’s existing Status update, which for most users, is set to “Available” on default.

The function looks and feels very similar to Instagram Stories, with a time meter at the top of every video of image.

Besides WhatsApp and Instagram, the feature has also been rolling out on Facebook Messenger and the Facebook main app, to really give Snapchat a run for its money.

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