All the Features Facebook Copied From Snapchat in 2016 (recode.net)

Last year, Facebook looked several times at Snapchat, a company that reportedly refused to be acquired by the social giant, for new features in Facebook Messenger, and its Instagram services. From a report on Recode: Here's the list of features Facebook launched this year that appear to be direct threats to Snapchat:
1. Facebook bought MSQRD, an app that creates silly face filters, in March.
2. It has since added the face filter technology to the main Facebook app and Messenger.
3. Facebook started testing a new Snapchat-style camera inside its main app. Messages sent using the new camera are ephemeral.
4. Facebook built a Snapchat clone app called Flash specifically for emerging markets like Brazil.
5. Instagram ripped off Snapchat's Stories feature. (It actually works pretty well.) Instagram also added ephemeral messaging.

Comments

Silly face filters need to die

[Anonymous Coward]

So does anyone who puts that stupid fucking puppy mouth and eyes on their pictures.

Re: Silly face filters need to die

[Anonymous Coward]

No, those are awesome. It tells me who I should never associate with.

Re:Silly face filters need to die

[ranton]

Silly face filters need to die

I on the other hand hope your capacity for childhood whimsy can live again someday. Nearly everything I do with my two year old daughter could be considered childish, unmanly, unproductive, etc by curmudgeons like you, but I am glad not everyone shares your bleak view on what forms of entertainment are acceptable. Watching my daughter laugh as her tongue becomes huge in the phone screen is a damn good use of my time, IMHO, and my family members asking for more snap-chats like that seem to agree.

I also can get a good laugh at my young sister and brother in law dancing at a New Year's party with silly filters on their faces, so I don't think childish fun only applies to interactions with toddlers either.

Re:Silly face filters need to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Now your just rubbing it in. For many of us whimsy was the first thing to go, replaced by a bitter sarcasm we mistook for humor. (you insensitive clod)

Re:Silly face filters need to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry he's just suffering from post-partum lobotomy syndrome, where the environmental retardation effects of 'a new family' makes everything his little darling does special and worth sharing. (some say they're just suffering from sleep deprivation) Some breeders suffer from this more than once in their lives even though there no medical reason after the first occurrence. It's just a form of repressed hysteria.

Ephemeral?

[roninmagus]

If you think anything on FB (or any other platform for that matter) is ephemeral then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Re: Ephemeral?

[kelemvor4]

$200. It's in brooklyn. Used often, and you can do what you like with it. Paypal?

How will they copy...

[houstonbofh]

How will they copy being the place where their parents are not?

Re:How will they copy...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Make all posts private so only your intended audience will see them.
2. Don't friend your parents.
2a. Block your parents and your friends' parents and tell them you deleted your Facebook account.
3. Sell all weed and ecstasy you want.
4. Profit.

Why wouldn't they?

[Shimbo]

It's easier to pay a few developers than buy a company with a stupid valuation. Who'd have thought it? Shame for Snapchat but that's business.

Re:Why wouldn't they?

[pauljlucas]

That didn't stop Facebook from buying Instagram for 1 billion. It's more to do with Snap not wanting to sell.

Important!

[DogDude]

This is important! What chat app are pre-teen girls going to use for the next few months?!?! Such uncertainty! Such turmoil! How will we survive this?

They didn't copy 3

[allo]

> Messages sent using the new camera are ephemeral.
You think, they are ephemeral, because YOU cannot see them anymore.

And snapchat 'ripped off' those before.

[queazocotal]

The notion that any of these ideas is particularly innovative is ridiculous.
All of the text-based ideas applied to the video world.
Short messages, time-based messages, messages with silly effects, ... all have been around since at least the 80s.
The fact you applied an obvious thing to a new technology does not make you specially innovative in any way that deserves protection.

Re:And snapchat 'ripped off' those before.

[speedplane]

The notion that any of these ideas is particularly innovative is ridiculous.

I'd go further and say that the fact that Facebook copied these feature should surprise no one, and even further, most people should not care. It's hard to get worked up over stealing meaningless technology that makes the world dumber.

And...

[Arkh89]

Here's the list of fucks I give :

Re:And...

[Thaelon]

You should because the dominant social networks are all trying to eat each others' user bases and we don't want there to be a clear winner. That's super bad for free speech.

Ephemeral Facebook???

[hyades1]

Based on past performance, and current evidence that Facebook has been buying user data from other sources in a very aggressive effort to further "commoditize" users, who would be stupid enough to believe, "messages sent using the new camera are ephemeral"?

Really...you'd have to be seriously daft to trust Facebook about that.

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[thegarbz]

Really...you'd have to be seriously daft to trust Facebook about that.

You're right. But you have to be even dafter not to apply Occam's razor to the situation. What's more likely, that they will keep a video that was shared between two parties who are expressly told that the video is ephemeral while trying to monetise it despite it having next to no value compared to the data they already get from the user's phone and actions while using facebook all the while potentially risking a huge fucking lawsuit not to mention what would happen in Germany, France and the EU for breaching data laws,

or that they would have this feature do what it says on the box simply to keep a customer who comes back to Facebook.

I trust Facebook on this because my tinfoil hat is only made of 2 layers and not the 700 + lead lining needed to come up with this kind of daft idea.

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[hyades1]

No doubt Volkswagen had the same mindset with respect to Diesel engine emissions. Of course they wouldn't dare! (snicker)

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[hyades1]

Did you notice the goof who responded to my comment, taking the view that Facebook would never dare, and anybody who thinks they would must be a tinfoil hatter?

Poor credulous fucker.

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[thegarbz]

There's a difference between breaking some government regulation that no one cares about, and expressly doing the one thing you claim that your service does.

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[hyades1]

You don't seriously expect anybody to buy that argument, I hope. That "regulation nobody cares about" is going to cost Volkswagen more money world-wide than any fine in history. And yes, building Diesel automobiles that performed like gasoline autos was central to Volkswagen's business plan.

Re:Ephemeral Facebook???

[thegarbz]

You don't seriously expect anybody to buy that argument

Nope. I'm not selling an argument. I'm just stating a fact. You're falling into the same trap of comparing one thing against another despite having very different motivations and consequences.

That "regulation nobody cares about" is going to cost Volkswagen more money world-wide than any fine in history.

And yet people are still happily buying Volkswagons because it wasn't the people who cared. What a company gets as a fine is irrelevant providing they don't burn through the good will of the customers.

And yes, building Diesel automobiles that performed like gasoline autos was central to Volkswagen's business plan.

And they still do, And they still build cars, and they still sell them to people. PEOPLE didn't care. Governments did. VWs continue to do what they said on the box: get people from a to b, everything else is secondary. On the flip side you're saying this is the same thing as something not doing exactly what something is primarily designed for and marketed to do.

If you think these are the same thing I have a large bridge capable of carrying 4 lanes of traffic* to sell you.

*It may only carry the weight of a single cat though.

Well

[DaMattster]

I guess we can start calling Facebook "Facecrook" now. After all, isn't Facebook stealing our data and now other people's ideas?

Gosh darn them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the presses, boys! A company copies popular concepts from another company in their same industry. News at 11!

Could msmash prove how much more of a tech bigot they are? Such a crap editor.

Good

[hackel]

The fewer proprietary, walled-garden chat networks that exist, the better. Now if Facebook would just eliminate WhatsApp, they'd be making some real progress.

Re:Good

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The fewer proprietary, walled-garden chat networks that exist, the better

What I think you meant to say is "the fewer people using proprietary, walled-garden chat networks." What happens is that, if FB steals SC's users, the total number of users remains constant, and now there are fewer networks. As that number trends to 0, they don't become less popular, they achieve monopoly status. So, that's less innovation, more dicking over all customers, and crucially for a communications platform, the ability to censor users.

We are all different ! - I'm not!

[DrYak]

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Crowd: Shhh!

Yup, it's a complete lack of originality.

Firing up GIMP (or Photoshop or whatever) to quickly make an original edit based on an idea that you just had (no matter if the result is a bit goofy) : that's funny, creative and something that *needs* to be encouraged in kids.

Snapchat making an automatic filter,
and thousands of people posting millions of the exact same silly face using the exact same automatic filter,
that's a complete lack of originality.
It's not "childish", its boring. And most people are fed up with it.

Re:We are all different ! - I'm not!

[mwvdlee]

You're quoting the same "Life of Brian" quote that everybody who complains about other peoples' lack of originality use.

Facerecognition : 10 years ago vs. now

[DrYak]

Except nerds know that snapchat {...} implement it in a chat-application. And nerds would be interested in the technological aspects {...} at least the nerds slashdot was originally aimed at.

10 years ago, some /.er might have been interested in automatic matching a "feature mesh" over a photo with some OpenCV powered face recognition software.
(So that any face edit meme that gets suddenly popular on something awful can quickly be implemented with a short script and rolled to snapchat end users with minimal originallity).

Nowadays, the interests of most /.er is in how *NOT* to have their face detected by the apps.

Common where have you been hidden during the last 10 Chaos Computing Club Congresses ???

Re:Facerecognition : 10 years ago vs. now

[drinkypoo]

Nowadays, the interests of most /.er is in how *NOT* to have their face detected by the apps.

It's just a matter of time before none of that shit works any more. There are no technical solutions to social problems, at least, not ones that last. If you want a better world, you're going to have to go forth and make it the hard way. Not with technology, but with actual involvement.

And nothing of value was gained ...

[johnlcallaway]

This is what happens when immature people are given any responsibility without oversight by adults. The same type of people that name servers after Star Wars/Lord of the Rings/Star Trek people/places/things and later hopefully learn how moronic they sound explaining things to the adults that provide their funding/paychecks and grow out of it.

Social problems vs. OpenCV

[DrYak]

Yes, I fully understand that the problem faced when trying to save privacy are complex social ones.

I'm just pointing that, unlike what the above poster is saying, even from technical point of view, Snapchat's Silly Face are idiotic and un-interesting.

"Finding faces" used to by a technically interesting challenge 10 years ago.
(And the first real-time camera-mapped avatars invented in the late 90s / early 2000s were *where* the new technological development was happening).
(Snapchat's Silly Faces isn't anything new or technically interesting. It's just the same kind of technology like 10-20 years ago, except that, thanks to a lot of Moore's law - it doesn't fit in a whole datacenter, like Facebook's creepy face recognition at its beginning - nor in a TV studio's bit workstation, as real-time avatar did - but fits inside the smartphone in your pocket. And now with the processing power to run image filters at those coordinates, rather than simple 3D mesh avatars)

"NOT Finding Faces" is what is currently technically interesting for geeks.

Woosh!

[DrYak]

You're quoting the same "Life of Brian" quote that everybody who complains about other peoples' lack of originality use.

I think the word you're looking for is "Meta".