When Facebook purchased the company MSQRD, it was pretty clear that it was looking to take a page out of Snapchat’s playbook and offer users the chance to augment their appearance. Now, with Halloween rapidly approaching, many users have found a new feature that the Menlo Park company is calling Masks that will give you a number of Halloween-themed masks to “wear” when they go live.
Traditional Halloween “Masks” marks Facebook’s new feature
Pumpkin, skeleton and witch augmentation among others will mark Facebook’s first ‘theft’ from Snapchat as the company looks to win young users back as well as continue its promotion of Facebook Live. While many already use it, Facebook feels that Live needed a jump start and recently launched a two-phased advertising campaign to promote the service begun earlier this year.
FB already allowed users to go live from MSQRD’s app earlier this year after it acquired the company, but today marks the first time that the masks can be “worn” from the social network’s mobile app, albeit it only for iOS users.
For those who don’t have the time or the inclination to dress up on Halloween, Facebook is here to help.
So far, only users on iOS in the US, UK, and New Zealand will be treated to the new feature, but Facebook has promised to get to Android users “in the coming months” as well as to those living in other countries.
Half of the increasing value of Snapchat and its appeal to a younger user is the fact that the messaging app isn’t afraid to shake things up nor cater to the most creative user and Snapchat certainly does that.
Facebook hopes that “Masks” might also encourage other self-conscious people to go live by comfortably obscuring their faces.
To don a mask one needs only open a Live video from their Page, News Feed or Timeline and then look to the upper left-hand side of your phone or tablets’ screen which will have a magic wand that when tapped will show the different effect options.
The company was once cool, but some of this cachet and thunder has been stolen by younger, hipper apps like the aforementioned Snapchat as well as others like Houseparty. Sure Zuckerberg has over 1.7 billion users but they aren’t using FB as much, and Facebook would like to reverse this trend among all the cool kids that still have accounts but engage with Snapchat more and more.
