Things are heating up between Facebook and Snapchat

When $4 earlier this week, it felt like the social network was hoping for a "third-times-the-charm" effect in its on-going efforts to rival Snapchat.

Since 2012, Facebook has tried to play catch-up with features from wildly popular messaging app, and this new acquisition highlights the growing tension between the two companies as they tackle digital video and the lucrative advertising dollars that go with it.

Failed products

Since Snapchat first started hooking millennials in late 2011, Facebook has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, tried to mimic some of its most alluring features.

$4 an app which which let users send self-destructing photos and videos. The company $4 a year and a half later. So Facebook tried again with $4 in 2014 which was reportedly built $4. The app $4, and in December, it $4 too.

And Facebook didn't just try to build Snapchat clones. It twice>$4, but CEO Evan Spiegel turned Zuck down both times.

Facebook says that it plans to keep Masquerade as a stand-alone app while also $4. How exactly it will do that remains to seen, but the Masquerade features will likely start showing up in Facebook's video products, an area where it's putting a lot of focus.

Video ambitions

Snapchat now has $4 with far fewer monthly active users and a more opt-in viewing experience (on Snapchat, users have to tap-to-play video content while Facebook's videos autoplay).

$4 are up 5x from this time last year.

Facebook video, too, has $4 Even more recently, Facebook has started putting huge focus on its $4that offers much more of the immediacy and ephemerality of the Snapchat experience.

Nick Cicero, the CEO of $4, which specializes in Snapchat analytics, says that Facebook reached out in January for information about Snapchat influencers and viewership. The two companies did not enter into a business agreement.

Facebook has also approached celebrities and other top creators, offering to pay them to use its Live product, $4.

Although Snapchat is still in the early stages of monetizing, its "Discover" and "Live" stories, they are $4 because they are opt-in and context-based, with a 100%-engaged audience. More than normal Facebook videos, Live streams have that same sense of immediacy and engagement.

A high-profile poach

As both companies seek to develop the right monetization model for their digital video offerings, Snapchat $4. Sriram Krishnan, who founded the $4that places Facebook ads on non-Facebook apps and mobile sites, recently left Facebook to join Snapchat.

Two other high-profile Facebook execs that defected to Snapchat didn't last long there - $4. But a LinkedIn search shows that at least 20 employees who went directly from one to the other are still there today.

As one Facebook low-level employee recently described it to Business Insider, there's a feeling within the company that Snapchat is looking like a bigger threat than ever before.