Facebook introduces "Messenger Day"

Meet the latest Messenger update, which begins rolling out to smartphones yesterday. Called Messenger Day, its new feature allows users to share photos with their contacts that disappear after 24 hours.

Messenger Day comes complete with effects and stickers, and users can decide to share their daily story with either a subset of their Messenger contacts, or everyone who is connected with them on the messaging platform. New stories automatically show up on top of the Messenger contact list, and users are also notified if someone who they are chatting with has added anything new to their story.

"At the end of last year, we launched Messenger’s new fast, powerful built-in camera to help make your conversations better than ever. Billions of photos and videos have been sent capturing all those heartfelt, funny and serious messages that make the Messenger community so powerful. We love seeing how much fun people are having with Messenger’s new visual tools."

There’s a camera button right inside the otherwise familiar iOS and Android chat app, making it easy to snap a photo or record a video. You can then add the sort of stickers, emoji, text, drawings and special effects that Snapchat has popularized. It’s almost all here.

Here’s how Messenger Day works:

1. First make sure you’ve updated your Messenger app so you have the latest version.
2. Open Messenger, and tap on the camera highlighted with a sun to celebrate this launch. Doing so drops you right into the full-screen camera. Or, tap the “Add to your day” button at the top of your inbox to get started.
3. Snap a quick selfie or take a photo or video of what’s around you.
4. To add art and effects, tap the smiley face icon in the top right and then tap to add to your photo or video. You can also add text over your images by tapping the “Aa” icon, and you can overlay a drawing by tapping the squiggly line in the top right corner.
5. Once you have your photo or video the way you want it, tap the arrow in the bottom right corner. You can then add directly to your day, save it to your phone’s camera roll, and/or you can choose to send it to a specific person or group of people. The photo or video that you add to your day will be viewable for 24 hours.

You can also add to your day from a conversation you’re having with a friend or group of people. After you send a photo or video, you’ll see the option to “add to your day.” Simply tap that text, and you’ll be asked to confirm you’d like to add it to your day.

While you’re messaging with someone, you’ll see if they have anything new from their day, too.

Of course it’s up to you if you want to share your day with everyone you talk to in Messenger or just your closest friends and family. You can customize how you share by tapping the “more” icon and then choosing “Everyone Except” or “Custom.” If you share something to your day that you decide you want to take down, just tap the image at the top of your inbox, then tap the three dots at the bottom right hand corner of your image, and then select “Delete.”

Facebook had been testing Messenger Day with a subset of its users in countries like Poland and Australia since last fall, now, it is making it available to all of Messenger’s users via updates to the service’s iOS and Android apps.

Facebook-owned Instagram added Stories to its app in August. In January, Facebook began tests of the photo sharing format in its main app. And just last month, Facebook-owned Whatsapp added an encrypted version dubbed Status.