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Facebook Launches Lifestage To Crush Snapchat

By Caroline Diana
Published on: 19:39 PST, Aug 20, 2016

Facebook has unveiled a new app called Lifestage, and the intent most likely seems to defeat rival Snapchat. Only time will tell if Facebook could actually make this wish a reality.

When Snapchat first came into being its popularity was soaring, but not in the manner Twitter and Facebook rose. Snapchat had a niche audience. The demographics of these users were well-defined. They were highly creative, fun-loving, and made it a point to stay away from the madding crowd of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram.

Nonetheless, the Snapchat users did not necessarily abandon these platforms. They just enjoyed using Snapchat more because it was niche and because it was present and highly private.

Now, Facebook has introduced something similar which could convince the users of Snapchat to migrate to its teen app Lifestage. Although anyone can sign in, this app is purely dedicated to high school kids. And guess what? It’s made by a teen. Michael Sayman is nineteen and he started making money selling apps at 13. He is a self-taught coder who learned to do stuff via online tutorials he found via Google.

Mark Zuckerberg personally chose Sayman to be featured at at F8 developer conference. Sayman is now a product manager at Facebook.

“To be honest, when I left high school and joined Facebook, I was pretty scared. I didn’t really know what to expect and I didn’t really know how it all worked. Part of what makes Facebook so unique is our ability to be bold and explore new concepts all the time. This is what I personally love about Facebook and it’s why I’m so grateful for being a part of this incredible community. Being able to work on new products has been amazing and I’m so excited to introduce one of those today.”

As per the description of the mobile app, “Lifestage makes it easy and fun to share a visual profile of who you are with your school network.”

The users will have to capture into a field on their profile, then post it on their profile.

Once their school is unlocked, they can access the profiles of others in their school community (and all over!) so they can get to know people better in their school and nearby schools, discover others who are into the same stuff they are, and connect with them.

How It Works

• Build a profile by adding videos to fields of the things you like, the things you don’t, how you do things, and more.

• Discover others who are into the same things you are into and connect with them.

• Share to dozens of fields in various sections of your profile such as “Music,” “Home,” and “School.”

• Change out and replace your videos in fields at any moment, as often as you like.

“Thank you so much to everyone made this possible. I can’t believe the life I’m living and so grateful for all of it,” Sayman said on his Facebook page.

Lifestage allows you to share a visual profile of who you are with your (school) network.

“Like Facebook in 2004, we are rolling out Lifestage on a school by school basis. By default, all schools start locked and as soon as 20 people sign up for any particular school, the school unlocks. From there, we plan on exploring how to further expand Lifestage,” said Sayman on Facebook.

According to Pando, Sayman’s mom has seen her son balance his passion and studies.

“I watch my son, every night and every single day, staying up until 4 or 5 am, working on the app, doing his homework, sleeping two or three hours, and then going to school. I decided at one point he can’t do everything at one time. You do the apps or you study very hard,” said Cristina Sayman.

Sayman decided to make apps.

Only time will tell if Sayman’s Lifestage will be able to beat Snapchat.

[Image via Michael Sayman]

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