Watch out, Snapchat, here comes Facebook

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Facebook is flattering the heck out of one-time acquisition target Snapchat.

On Thursday, the world’s largest social network introduced a new feature that directly targets its quickly growing rival.

It allows people to send messages that disappear after a certain amount of time, much like those sent through Snapchat.

In Messenger, an hourglass appears that a sender can touch. Any messages sent with the hourglass showing will be erased automatically in an hour. The sender or anyone else in the conversation can turn the feature off as well.

Facebook is currently testing out the feature in France, according to USA Today, but it could expand the program depending on the response.

In a twist that surely hasn’t escaped Snapchat’s notice, Facebook’s new program is debuting almost two years exactly after the upstart social network turned down a buyout bid from Mark Zuckerberg’s company that was worth $3 billion.

Snapchat’s user base has grown quickly since then, and the company recently said that its users watch 6 billion videos a day, compared to 8 billion for Facebook users.

Snapchat launched in 2011 as a messaging service whose messages self-destructed after being viewed, but it has been expanding to include even original entertainment over the past year.

Tags: facebook, facebook disappearing messages, facebook messenger, snapchat, snapchat growth