Facebook has launched its own photo creation and sharing app, simply called ‘Facebook camera’, just weeks after buying Instagram.
As well as the option to take, edit, group and filter photos, the free iOS app features a news feed of friend’s photos (and the option to switch to just the user’s) and nothing else.
From the news feed display, users can take your own photographs or pull shots from their ‘camera roll’ to tweak and upload.
Users can then post one or more photos to Facebook from within the app, using a custom caption.
Facebook have not revealed how this app relates to its $1 billion (£640m) acquisition of Instagram in April.
Technology publication The Verge reports that the app was made by Facebook’s Photos team and developers poached from Gowalla and MadeBySofa –not the Instagram creators — and the social network’s Derick Mainstold the site that “enhancing the Facebook photos experience on mobile is long overdue.”
Facebook Camera is currently iPhone-exclusive.
Following facebook’s launch of its Camera application, Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum commented: “Facebook now operates in a post-IPO world in which it is under intense pressure to take its business to the next level and drive value, and to do so quickly. Mobile presents opportunities for Facebook to extend its reach and engagement with consumers, and the launch of Facebook Camera is an attempt to demonstrate that it is being proactive on this front.
“Camera is not a groundbreaking application, and of course is similar to Instagram, which Facebook is set to acquire. However, the acquisition could take anything up to 12 months, and in the meantime Facebook needs access to a better photo-sharing UI that will give it more control over an important type of shared content, and better insights into the users who generate it. On completion of the acquisition there is nothing to stop Facebook quietly incorporating Camera into the stronger Instagram,” Zoller concluded.
