Facebook is trialling vanishing messages on its smartphone app.
By tapping an hourglass icon in the top right area of their messenger screens, users in France on Thursday were able to send messages to friends which vanished an hour after being sent.
If successful, this feature is likely to be permanently rolled out to users in other countries as well.
The feature mimics the ephemeral nature of popular image-messaging app Snapchat, which allows users to send images to one another which vanish after one to 10 seconds, depending on the user's preferences.
While a strong element of Snapchat's appeal has been the premise that its messages are not permanently stored to potentially compromise users, its disappearing images can still be captured for permanent storage by taking a screenshot while they are showing.
Snapchat had an estimated 200 million monthly active users in July (according to AdWeek), while Facebook Messenger crossed the 600 million monthly active users mark in March (according to CNBC).
The app rejected a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook in 2013.
Full circle
Although Facebook is now testing vanishing messages as a "new" feature, messages sent via Facebook's online chat box (which mobile users can now access via Facebook Messenger) originally vanished.
From April 2008, when Facebook Chat was first rolled out to desktop users, until late 2010, when Facebook began saving users' Chat messages, Facebook Chat messages disappeared when the user logged out or closed their Facebook tabs.
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