{"id":337723,"date":"2017-04-06T00:41:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/04\/05\/facebook-stories-friends-ghosts\/"},"modified":"2017-04-06T00:41:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:41:09","slug":"facebooks-stories-section-now-shows-your-friends-as-ghosts-to-make-you-think-theyre-using-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/facebooks-stories-section-now-shows-your-friends-as-ghosts-to-make-you-think-theyre-using-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook&#8217;s &#8216;Stories&#8217; Section Now Shows Your Friends as &#8216;Ghosts&#8217; to Make You Think They&#8217;re Using It"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"body\" readability=\"70.434971098266\">Last week, Facebook <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/03\/28\/facebook-camera-effects-stories\/\">launched<\/a> its new camera-focused update that brought along &#8220;Facebook Stories&#8221; into the main iOS application. Like Snapchat and Instagram Stories before it, Facebook Stories let users post a picture or video onto their feed, which disappears 24 hours later.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.macrumors.com\/article-new\/2017\/04\/facebook-stories-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"423\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-558966\"\/><\/p>\n<p><em>Facebook Stories at launch<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, adoption of Facebook Stories appears to have been fairly low and users have begun to notice that the social network company is making a slight UI tweak to the feature in an attempt to boost usage (via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/4\/5\/15189148\/facebook-stories-friends-ghosts-news-feed-snapchat\"><em>The Verge<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>When it launched, Stories showed a circle with &#8220;Your Story,&#8221; a Facebook bubble that explained how to use the new feature, and then listed your friends&#8217; Stories, if there were any to show. If there were none, the top of the Facebook app contained a lot of white space (as seen in the image above).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.macrumors.com\/article-new\/2017\/04\/fb-stories-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"797\" height=\"410\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-558987\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Now, the company has begun to fill out this white space in the event that none of your friends are posting to Facebook Stories with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kantrowitz\/status\/849388758336143361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&#038;ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2017%2F4%2F5%2F15189148%2Ffacebook-stories-friends-ghosts-news-feed-snapchat\">ghost-like, grayed-out profile pictures<\/a>. When tapped on, the bubbles simply remark that &#8220;[Blank] hasn&#8217;t added to their Story recently.&#8221; Adding to your own Story remains the same, with a tap on your own profile bubble.<\/p>\n<p>Although the update could be a simple UI clean-up to address the white space issue when not many Stories were up on the app, users online are looking at it as Facebook&#8217;s attempt to draw their eyes to the new section of the app with pictures of their friends, convincing more people to post a Story of their own. On Instagram Stories, friends&#8217; Stories are grayed out only after you&#8217;ve tapped through their most recent posts. If no one has posted anything, the space remains empty.<\/p>\n<p>Since Instagram Stories and Facebook&#8217;s energetic push into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2016\/12\/20\/facebook-group-video-chat-messenger\/\">video content<\/a>, Facebook and Snapchat have remained rivals in the mobile app space. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/04\/01\/happy-april-fools-day-2017\/\">On April Fools&#8217; Day this past weekend<\/a>, Snapchat finally responded to Facebook&#8217;s recent glut of &#8220;Stories&#8221; updates with a copy of its own that allowed users to snap a picture using a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.recode.net\/2017\/4\/1\/15148512\/snapchat-instagram-snap-april-fools-filter\">filter that looked just like a post on Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Facebook <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/03\/28\/facebook-camera-effects-stories\/\">launched<\/a> its new camera-focused update that brought along &#8220;Facebook Stories&#8221; into the main iOS application. Like Snapchat and Instagram Stories before it, Facebook Stories let users post a picture or video onto their feed, which disappears 24 hours later.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.macrumors.com\/article-new\/2017\/04\/facebook-stories-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"423\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-558966\" \/><center><em>Facebook Stories at launch<\/center><\/em><br \/>\n<br \/>\nUnfortunately, adoption of Facebook Stories appears to have been fairly low and users have begun to notice that the social network company is making a slight UI tweak to the feature in an attempt to boost usage (via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/4\/5\/15189148\/facebook-stories-friends-ghosts-news-feed-snapchat\"><em>The Verge<\/em><\/a>). <\/p>\n<p>When it launched, Stories showed a circle with &#8220;Your Story,&#8221; a Facebook bubble that explained how to use the new feature, and then listed your friends&#8217; Stories, if there were any to show. If there were none, the top of the Facebook app contained a lot of white space (as seen in the image above).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.macrumors.com\/article-new\/2017\/04\/fb-stories-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"797\" height=\"410\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-558987\" \/><center><em>Facebook Stories now, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kantrowitz\/status\/849388758336143361\">via @Kantrowitz<\/a><\/center><\/em><br \/>\n<br \/>\nNow, the company has begun to fill out this white space in the event that none of your friends are posting to Facebook Stories with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Kantrowitz\/status\/849388758336143361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&#038;ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2017%2F4%2F5%2F15189148%2Ffacebook-stories-friends-ghosts-news-feed-snapchat\">ghost-like, grayed-out profile pictures<\/a>. When tapped on, the bubbles simply remark that &#8220;[Blank] hasn&#8217;t added to their Story recently.&#8221; Adding to your own Story remains the same, with a tap on your own profile bubble. <\/p>\n<p>Although the update could be a simple UI clean-up to address the white space issue when not many Stories were up on the app, users online are looking at it as Facebook&#8217;s attempt to draw their eyes to the new section of the app with pictures of their friends, convincing more people to post a Story of their own. On Instagram Stories, friends&#8217; Stories are grayed out only after you&#8217;ve tapped through their most recent posts. If no one has posted anything, the space remains empty.<\/p>\n<p>Since Instagram Stories and Facebook&#8217;s energetic push into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2016\/12\/20\/facebook-group-video-chat-messenger\/\">video content<\/a>, Facebook and Snapchat have remained rivals in the mobile app space. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2017\/04\/01\/happy-april-fools-day-2017\/\">On April Fools&#8217; Day this past weekend<\/a>, Snapchat finally responded to Facebook&#8217;s recent glut of &#8220;Stories&#8221; updates with a copy of its own that allowed users to snap a picture using a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.recode.net\/2017\/4\/1\/15148512\/snapchat-instagram-snap-april-fools-filter\">filter that looked just like a post on Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"linkback\">Tag: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/roundup\/facebook\/\">Facebook<\/a> <\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forums.macrumors.com\/threads\/facebook-stories-friends-ghosts.2040435\/\">Discuss this article<\/a> in our forums<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.macrumors.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?a=jyD7Aq09uaM:el-2ZptbIL8:6W8y8wAjSf4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?d=6W8y8wAjSf4\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.macrumors.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?a=jyD7Aq09uaM:el-2ZptbIL8:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/MacRumors-All?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/MacRumors-All\/~4\/jyD7Aq09uaM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" alt=\"\"\/> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[68,69,59,26],"class_list":["post-337723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-macrumors","tag-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}