Facebook Releases Instagram Clone, Two Months After Acquisition

redletterdave writes "Six days after the company's IPO and two months after it acquired photo-sharing app company Instagram for $1 billion, Facebook debuted a photo app of its own on Thursday, called Facebook Camera. The app is now available as a free download in the App Store, and it's currently only available for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Facebook Camera is set up very similarly to Instagram and includes most of the same features (including photo filters), but Dirk Stoop, Facebook's product manager for photos, said Facebook was working on this application long before the Instagram acquisition on April 9."

Comments

Microsoft of social networking?

[Pecisk]

It seems that Facebook not only have taken Bill's money, but also followed his footsteps in dealing with competition.

Actually I don't even care anymore. I don't use FB that frueqently, and slowly migrating away to G+ for geeky stuff. For rest I have email :)

Re:Microsoft of social networking?

[Ihmhi]

I think this represents an interesting dichotomy for geeks.

For instance, you might have the whole "going to dinner parties with the wife" thing in order to maintain a social norm. Meanwhile, you'd rather be in your garage tinkering with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino or something in your garage and making an anti-squirrel turret for your backyard.

As I'm getting older I'm realizing more and more that the hobbies I find intellectually satisfying are rarely something that can be plugged into a social component. As good (and intelligent) as my friends are, most of them wouldn't want to spend an afternoon learning something interesting in Perl or building a robot for the fuck of it. We go out for drinks or to a diner or something like that. I'm finding that I have to divorce "intellectually stimulating" from "social interaction" more and more every day.

No wonder we spend all of our time in the basement. It's the only place we can get any of the really interesting shit done, and almost no one wants to join us.

Re:Microsoft of social networking?

[Tackhead]

No wonder we spend all of our time in the basement. It's the only place we can get any of the really interesting shit done, and almost no one wants to join us.

Old joke:

Three NASA engineers, one from headquarters in Washington, one from the Johnson center in Houston, and one from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena were discussing whether it was better to have a wife or a mistress.

The HQ guy said it was better to have a mistress, because they are more understanding of the long absences required of a NASA employee. The Johnson guy retorted, "Oh, no, one must always follow proper rules and procedures, and marriage is the proper procedure, so it is better to have a wife."

The JPL engineer replied, "No, it is better to have both. That way, you can tell your wife that you're with your mistress, your mistress that you're with your wife, and go to the lab and work."

No wonder shares are dropping

[dejanc]

Just how bubbly was it for Facebook to spend $1 billion on Instagram? Whether they wanted to destroy competition or whatever they wanted to do, this just makes no sense at all. I am sure people at Facebook know stuff that the general public doesn't, but this just seems like a ridiculous way to do business.

Re:No wonder shares are dropping

[Theophany]

Yeah, which is weird because getting served with a class action lawsuit and an SEC investigation days after your IPO generally points to a company worth handing your money over to.

The company, by its own admission, is not convinced that they can monetise the mobile user experience, so for them to be wasting time, money and resources on flash in the pan shite like Instagram points to a company that isn't worth the paper its shares are printed on.

Re:No wonder shares are dropping

[Rich0]

Just ask anybody who made a ton of money off of credit default swaps in 2007 - paper is worth whatever you can get somebody else to pay for it. I'd say that 80% of the "value" of the stock in most trendy companies is based on hype, and you can make a lot of money off of that hype if you're an insider.

If you come out with a new laptop everybody yawns. If you come out with a new tablet people invest money. If you come out with a new pink sleeve for an iPad your stock will soar. Investors are like a big stampede, and if you wave a red flag in the direction they're all running in you'll get lots of money.

The thing is, it doesn't matter how many people are screaming about how great an investment CDS's, or tulips, or whatever is. Eventually you run out of new money, and the whole thing has to stand on whatever real-world earnings it can find. If those aren't there, then the whole situation gets ugly fast, and everybody is screaming for a bailout because "nobody could have seen this coming."

I think K summed it up fairly well - a person is intelligent, but people are dumb.

Re:No wonder shares are dropping

[ericloewe]

It's absurd. While I have never (and am not planning to) used Instagram, I find the whole concept redundant, especially because if you must absolutely share your pictures, any decent smartphone OS will do that automatically, or at least with minimal fuss.

This reminds me of the .com bubble - worthless companies with no real products (social networking is not a tangible product capable of surviving something big) having their value inflated to absurd levels, with billion dollar transactions being thrown around.

Stick a fork in it

[arcite]

This Social network fad is done. Yoked of innovation, on the path to mediocrity and disdain.

Re:Stick a fork in it

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Email took off and stayed established because it was an open interface and anyone could set up a server.

No. Email took off because it was *useful*. Even closed source email tools such as Exchange have success for the same reason.

Facebook on the other hand is not useful. It may be fun (to each his own), addictive, a great time waster, but it's not essential. I've had friends - real friends - with whom I've exchanged messages way before FB even existed, through email, Fidonet before that, and *gasp* telephone and hamradio before that.

You can do without FB, and ultimately this will be FB's undoing: either people will move on to some other nonessential such service to get their kicks, or they'll waste their free time on something else if Zuckerberg tries a little too hard to squeeze money out of them.

Re:Stick a fork in it

[whisper_jeff]

This Social network fad is done.

Except that's not remotely true. Facebook may fade away (eventually) but some form of social network or another will take its place. The internet has been one form of social network or another from the very beginning. I remember in the early days logging into a BBS waaaaay back in the day. What was that? It was basically the internet _and_ a social network in one. Then when I got the real thing, there were use groups and various forums. Again, social networks. And then came things like MySpace and social networks took on a whole new meaning. And MySpace faltered and faded and was replaced by Facebook. And odds are that Facebook will stumble at some point and be replaced by something else but social networks are not done. They've been here from the very beginning and they will be here when the entire internet is closed down and the lights get turned off.

Not a fad. Not done.

Re:Stick a fork in it

[jareth-0205]

Facebook on the other hand is not useful.

Balls. Facebook is useful, it's just not *as useful or essential* as the media hype has made out.

It's great for keeping in touch with distant friends (and that is a valid form of friendship, despite what some people on /. seem to claim that friendships are a binary go-out-for-a-beer-or-you're-dead-to-me), organsing events/parties whatever, publicising trivial stuff, whatever.

It won't go away, but it probably won't change the world (any more).

No or few cultivated forms of social engagement

[Qbertino]

For instance, you might have the whole "going to dinner parties with the wife" thing in order to maintain a social norm. Meanwhile, you'd rather be in your garage tinkering with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino or something in your garage and making an anti-squirrel turret for your backyard.

As I'm getting older I'm realizing more and more that the hobbies I find intellectually satisfying are rarely something that can be plugged into a social component. As good (and intelligent) as my friends are, most of them wouldn't want to spend an afternoon learning something interesting in Perl or building a robot for the fuck of it. We go out for drinks or to a diner or something like that. I'm finding that I have to divorce "intellectually stimulating" from "social interaction" more and more every day.

-----------

When socialising becomes boring, just as you describe - I can relate to that, btw. - it's because today people rarely have any time or interest in cultivating social forms of engagement. It's still a relatively thin wholy educated layer of demografic that does these things, if at all.
If you want something stimulating to do that you do with other people it would be making music together, singing in a choir, staging a play or something like that.

4.5 years ago I discovered Tango dancing. And while I actually do have a diploma in performing arts and did that professionally in the 90ies (although not for a living really, you can't live off that), I never would have thought that I'd be doing that. I basically discovered Tango by accident, because a friend of mine asked me to come with her as her partner. Since then it's been like a drug. I go out 3 or more times a week at times and it only takes a little nudge to overcome the notion of just staying at my desk and doing a little programming or something.

Seriously, once you find a social activity that is stimulating beyond sitting together and chatting and getting slightly drunk, you're heading the right way. You can't dance while drunk, and you wouldn't want to, because you're having a ball (quite litterally at times :-) ) giving the ladies and girls a good time and improving your dancing skills. Just Tuesday I came back from Heidelberg with my feet hurting from dancing to much again. With a ladies/guy ratio like that (note the background), a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do, ... I guess. :-)))

Bottom line: Find a higher cultivated social activity than drinking and clubbing, such as the above mentioned, and going social won't be so one dimensional anymore. A few years ago it was Aikido for me, but since I've discovered Tango, I think I've found my contrast programm for the rest of my life.

My 2 cents.

They DID NOT buy it for $1 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

They bought it for mostly Facebook shares, which they CLAIMED were valued at $1billion. That was the whole point of that exercise, create a false third party confirmation of Facebook's share valuation!

It had nothing to do with Instagram's products or services, it was entirely about pumping a fake valuation of Facebook shares. A simply Pump-And-Dump.

It could have been ANY company prepared to cooperate in this that plausibly had a product with any product, overlapping or not.

man-kids

[luis_a_espinal]

4.5 years ago I discovered Tango dancing.

Wow.

That's one of the gayest things I've read in slashdot in a while.

Say what you want, this is the best venue for dating, a zillion times better than clubbing and getting hammered. Plus, on average, people engaged in trained dancing activities tend to have a higher level of education and income than the crowd engaged in clubbing and getting hammered. For me it was Salsa dancing. Dated a lot; have a lot fun; met more engineers that I could socialize with that way than at work; and where I met my wife.

Kids and man-kids will call it ghey. Men see it for what it is, a social activity.