A feature Facebook stole directly from Snapchat now has more than twice as many users as Snapchat

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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel (left) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

• Facebook Stories has accrued over 500 million daily active users, COO Sheryl Sandberg revealed during the company's earnings call on Wednesday.
• Facebook launched Stories, which many viewed as a copy of Snapchat's story function, two years ago.
• Mark Zuckerberg said that Instagram and WhatsApp also command more than 500 million Stories users each.
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Facebook Stories, whose striking resemblance to Snapchat stories raised eyebrows when it was launched two years ago, now has over 500 million daily users.

Facebook Stories are short photo or video updates that disappear after 24 hours, and the format is a direct imitation of Snapchat's Stories feature. Facebook has also replicated the feature across its other social apps, Instagram and WhatsApp.

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Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg revealed the social network's growing Stories base during the company's earnings call on Wednesday.

Read more: Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook's future involves making billions from shopping, not just ads

The half a billion user number represents a big jump since September, when Facebook reported that Stories had 300 million daily active users. The daily user figure for Facebook Stories is now more than twice the size of Snap's total daily active users, which it reported to be 190 million in its Q1 results earlier this week.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that each of Facebook's three main products - Facebook (including Messenger), Instagram, and WhatsApp - each commands more than 500 million daily active Stories users, putting the minimum total figure at roughly 1.5 billion.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has previously made light of Facebook - which reportedly tried to buy Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion - copying his company's ideas. "We would really appreciate it if they copied our data protection practices also," he quipped in May last year.

Get the latest Snap stock price here.