Once again, Facebook Inc. is following the footsteps of one of its rivals, this time, Snapchat. One of the former's apps, WhatsApp, is about to introduce its built-in camera that allows users to take photos or videos and send them directly to their contacts, much like the "stories" feature of SnapChat.

According to Bloomberg, the latest feature from WhatsApp is an example of a Facebook app that is building the tools made popular by its rival. In August, Instagram launched its version of "stories" which now has around 150 million users.

Randall Sarafa, product manager of WhatsApp, explained that SnapChat's ways of sending photos or video messages is a format that is being changed and improved upon by people. He added, "We're bringing this format into WhatsApp and giving it a bit of the WhatsApp flavor that we know, which touches on reliability, security, and personal sharing."

The number of photos sent daily has increased in number year over year to 3.3 billion in WhatsApp. While 760 million videos and 80 million GIFs are being sent daily which prompted WhatsApp to update its software to reflect the way people were using the same. Initially, WhatsApp was used for sharing statuses and eventually evolved into a messaging app.

WhatsApp has a bigger number of users with 158 million daily users while SnapChat reported that their user growth slowed down in the most recent quarter, perhaps Facebook's copying of its features may have played a major role to the decline.

The latest features of WhatsApp will be rolled out initially in France, Netherlands and other countries for testing before rolling out globally.

What do you think of WhatsApp's SnapChat-like features? Write and share your thoughts on the comments section down below.