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Facebook Is Building A Standalone Camera App To Encourage Its 1.6 Billion Users To Share More (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook engineers in London are working on a standalone camera app with a big live-streaming component. Similar to Snapchat, the app would open straight into a camera to foster immediate capturing and posting of photos and videos, as well as letting users stream via Facebook Live. With billions of smartphones in the world and near-ubiquitous high-speed data connections, Facebook sees a huge opportunity to get its 1.6 billion users sharing more than ever before. A camera app may help the company do that, and better compete with Snapchat at the same time. Facebook has recently rolled out a major live video update allowing anyone to post live streams of themselves to their timeline. Previously, only celebrities and public figures were allowed to use the feature. With this new Facebook Live update and standalone camera app reportedly in the works, the only thing holding Mark Zuckerberg back with his plan to triple the size of his social network is affordable internet.
I thought Instagram does the same thing.
So what does it do, automatically take a picture of dinner and quote a Beat poet based on the food items it identifies?
Periscope
Facebook Hoped people will share more and do more of Facebook and the think Facebook is the web.
Reality is users are sharing less personal stuff, sharing more cat meme pictures, and realise there is a big world out there with REAL friends who LIKE doing stuff with you in real life.
Personally, I prefer the REAL friends I have, the ones I can borrow a car from, the ones who will go out drinking and bail you out the next morning. The ones who would walk over broken glass to be there with you in times of crisis, the ones who invite you round for a BBQ, laugh with you, laugh even harder at you.
It's called Instagram. My biggest problem with Instagram is that it's full of bots. Why not fix what you already have instead of creating a completely new app?
I think the self-exposure trend is running its course. Even my more narcissistic FB contacts are posting fewer selfies in exotic locations and strange and unusual foods. FB is trying to keep it going, but nature takes its course and every fad will eventually go away.
I wonder what's next? Hopefully something less obnoxious.
and the other sh*t pile of junk they have thrown at us so far.
I heard that you can even have your friends like the picture you just took in the app even before it gets posted online so you won't have to worry whether they liked your picture or not.
**COUGH**bandwidth caps**COUGH**
Half the fun of Facebook is presenting yourself to your friends as a much cooler person than you actually are. How am I going to manage that when there's a live video feed showing them all my dorky self doing the talking?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Subby seems to think our tax dollars would be best spent subsidizing Facebook? I respectfully disagree.
I remember a Facebook Camera app on iOS. It didn't do anything special and disappeared after a while. I'd love to know why they think this will be different.
Well, facebook is a public company, as such shareholders need to be promised ever increasing returns.
Video streams seem like a nice overture to the tripple X business, eventually. After all, most of the FB users are adult anyway, right?
Just imagine the possibilities that can be opened.... and the reach... and the fans...
Good to no
I will take screenshots of all those stupid FB memes and post them as original photos, just to piss them off.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
It does, and the kids are using it over FB - which is why FB desperately needs something similar. Today's kids are tomorrow's adults that ignore FB, and they know it.
It's been a little while since I wrote mobile apps, but I seem to recall camera functions being freakin' easy to use. What are they "building" exactly ? These camera apps are the kind of thing a mobile noob can pump out in a day or two (speaking from experience). I mean, both iOS and Android APIs will happily encode to an MP4 file of your chosen quality, which you then read and upload wherever. Live streaming is less obvious, but well researched and documented... a simple copy-paste-tweak-run affair.
Or maybe the engineers are waiting for the Kardashian seal of approval :P
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Instead of reading how boring and mindless the multitude of Facebook subscribers are, one can watch it, live.
Have they thought about the kiddie porn angle of this? Or worse, the 'American pie' spying on the bed scenario? Actually, that scene should be shown to everyone with the stupidity to create a 'Facebook live' account.
But Facebook owns Instagram. Why not just integrate the two services better?
Strange. Facebook has been making a move to bring most of these apps back into the main app. They've tried standalone apps and outside the Messager app they've failed. They previously released a standalone camera app and it saw very little adoption so it was pulled from the app store. It'd be strange to see them try this route again after having failed previously.
Ogg draw nice huge circle in sand. Say, this is world, step inside Ogg show more.
Ogg draw smaller rectangle inside world, say this is computer.
Ogg draw smaller rectangle inside rectangle, say this is bigthink phone screen.
Ogg draw squiggle inside, say this is Facebook.
Ogg draw square in squiggle, say is LIKE button. Ogg like LIKE button.
Ogg make dots by square, says is apps inside apps inside apps.
Ogg pinch sand between fingers and let little grains fall, says this is all the people use apps.
People spend whole life inside little squiggles and rectangles and apps he say.
Next Ogg kick whole computer rectangle with foot.
This is grid down from war and resource depletion and stupid broken windmills, Ogg say.
Because people-heads stuck in apps and did not harness energy from Thorium.
This is so sad Ogg say. Ogg like little apps.
Ogg say,OK... now YOU draw better world. Use Thorium this time.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Yeah I hear you. I don't even understand why people don't all drive Fords...I mean...aren't all other cars really about the same thing? And why is there Pepsi, isn't Coke basically just the same thing?
Yeah, just what we need -- more morons pointing cameras at crap. People MYOFB and keep your face outa mine. Assholes.
I gave it a picture of Ted Cruz, and it came back with "Zodiac Killer." I think it works better than its creators ever knew it would!
You have to admit that a government which could track every citizen at all times through facial recognition software -- enabled by images uploaded to social media -- would provide a safer society. The power of information at work. Of course, there may be a cost; there's always a cost. I just don't think it's the 1984-inspired fantasy that most of its detractors seem to fear. And all I wanted was a Pepsi...
And if I don't want the app, are they going to start kicking me to google play like they do with messenger? If anything makes me want to use facebook's stuff less it is them hindering me from actually doing what I intend with their platform.
Yes, but you are pointing out products that are produced as competitors by different companies. This story is about a company with a strong product spending time and effort on another product that potentially competes with it (and thousands of other similar products, but never mind that!)
Why not lobby Google to improve the integration API and make it easier to use the native camera app inside other apps? Why does facebook have to duplicate functionality already present? I can only assume this will cause their app to become even more bloated. It's already at the beached-whale-about-to-explode point. Does everyone have unlimited memory for applications on their mobile device? I started bumping into the "Not enough memory to update this application" error years ago.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
But....but... its on the internet!! It is totally like nothing else ever before!
But....but... it's on computers!! Its like nothing else before!
Wash, rinse, repeat isn't it?