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.

Comments

Hope vs Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Voyeurism is getting old

[ugen]

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.

Re:Voyeurism is getting old

[TheGratefulNet]

I hope this fad does fade. its really boring and I'm tired of everyone always assuming you have a fb account.

I was talking to a recruiter and she mentioned an opening at fb. I told her I don't have a fb account - would that be a showstopper for working there (I assume it would be, even if not explicitly stated). she was shocked to hear this and actually asked me WHY I didn't have a fb account.

the fact that someone thought it was unusual to NOT have one, this is why I hope it dies soon. I have zero need for such things and the sooner it runs its course, the sooner we can get back to normal things again ;)

Re:Voyeurism is getting old

[rsborg]

Even my more narcissistic FB contacts are posting fewer selfies in exotic locations and strange and unusual foods.

This is what I'm seeing. I used to navigate to FB once in a while to essentially gawk at some of the more, uh, exhibitionist contacts, but recently it's all about spamming for Hillary or the outrage du jour (some of which are pretty depressing) and the occasional "really old woman out-dances young guy" sort of thing.
I haven't logged on in months.

Everyone I know is posting less pix online, and less information about themselves. Not just on FB, but G+, LinkedIn, etc.

If Facebook really cared about it's viewership, it'd adopt some of the snapchat like features with timed-archival of photos, etc, and maybe, just maybe, make it really difficult for HR dept. and school investigators and the like to find embarrassing content on workers/students (a high-profile case like where Apple said FU to the FBI would be really nice).

Maybe people are just done being "dumbfucks"? Maybe everyone is realizing that social media is also a problem vector?

Re:Voyeurism is getting old

[TheGratefulNet]

you hit on a key issue; the fact that employment is judging you based on your 'social media' posts - that sure puts a kibosh on any desire to truly express yourself in anything that is not vanilla-tame.

we all realize that HR are bastards and will use anything they find against you. we all need jobs and most of us are not going to be company owners, so we WILL end up working for someone else, mostly the rest of our lives.

who wants to worry about being out of work due to some social media post?

the more the 'authorities' want to track us, the less we are interested in feeding their voyeurism.

Re:Voyeurism is getting old

[toonces33]

I know a number of people that don't have FB. And for that matter I don't have it myself.

I can't help but wonder what fraction of the accounts are spammers and bots.

I don't think this is going to fly

[Jeremi]

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?