They're taking a play out of Facebook's strategy book: copy every feature of your competitor as quickly as possible. In this case, it seems they're going after

They're taking a play out of Facebook's strategy book: copy every feature of your competitor as quickly as possible. In this case, it seems they're going after WhatsApp and they're copying WhatsApp's status feature. This seems like a smart move for them because they can run for parity with WhatsApp and they'd still have one major benefit Facebook has been in a very tight spot to match: privacy. Most people don't seem to care about privacy, but if they start losing their (privacy aware) friends and family to Signal, they too will consider installing it as well. If they acquire enough network effects, they could hollow out a large chunk of WhatsApp, unless WhatsApp starts offering features Signal can't offer (e.g. better integrations into Facebook's other properties). It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out.