Facebook Camera
It seems like all the tech news outlets are gushing over the new Facebook camera app. It’s awesome, it works great, blah, blah, blah.
Here’s my two cents.
The app, on it’s own, is okay. If you want to upload photos to Facebook from your mobile device, then this app works much, much quicker than the Facebook app. So in that respect, it’s great.
You can take photos with the app, and as a stand alone camera… it’s rather meh. I’m not a fan of it.
You can add filters to the photos from your camera roll or the photos that you took with the app. In this respect, it’s very similar to Instagram. The filters are okay. Not too much, not too little. They are… okay.
So now lets get to what everyone is thinking, which is this:
Why on earth did Facebook make this app when they just bought Instagram? The answer is simple. This app was in development before the acquisition. This was meant to go heads up against Instagram.
But Facebook did buy them. Why release the app?
Well, their regular Facebook app is kind of crap. Have you ever tried uploading a photo through it? Not so good. Their camera app makes uploading very fast.
Here’s the thing. This app review falls under two categories. Those who use Instagram, and those who do not. If you are someone that does not use Instagram, the Facebook camera app is a great way to share your photos on your profile. If you are a user of Instagram (as I am) then this camera app is pretty redundant because I can already share my photos to Facebook… and Twitter, and so forth.
Overall… it’s not bad. Heck, it’s free. Why not… Because I am an Instagram user, I feel this app is not worth it. Will I use it? Probably, but only on certain occasions, like uploading some family pics. But sharing my “artsy” photos will still be Instagram exclusive.
What will happen to Instagram? There are many speculating that now that this Facebook camera app is live, Instagram will die. Facebook intends to kill it.
If you use common sense, then you’ll know that the answer is no. Facebook would be very foolish to kill Instagram. Instagram is too big to murder. Kill that community would not only piss off a huge group of people, but it’ll piss off their stock holders, too (that’s just a pure guess on my part… I don’t know crap about finances). It’s my opinion that Facebook does not really want to rock the boat anytime soon.
Anyways, to sum up, new new app is okay. That’s all. I’ll be curious to see what they do to it in future updates (upload videos please?), but for now… it’s just okay.
Facebook has waited so long to release anything good on mobile. Why wait until after acquiring Instagram to release something meant to compete with IG but that is clearly a misguided attempt that doesn’t do much at all to improve on IG, (besides multi-photo upload)?
People like Instagram because it is one pure medium not mixed with others (unless you choose to share to other networks). It is about communicating through visuals, seeing life through others’ eyes, especially strangers’ eyes, not necessarily friends’ eyes, and most importantly, it is founded on photography of everyday objects with less focus on people. Facebook photos tend toward social life: people’s faces and interactions and friends and parties and family and pets and babies, etc. Not art. IG allows amateurs to make art out of leaves and buildings and flowers. No one wants to see that stuff in their Facebook feed – it annoys people. But it’s exactly what we want on Instagram.
Thank you for the comments, Emily. You are spot on with people’s enjoyment of Instagram. I was so focused on the Facebook camera side of the fence that I totally neglected that obvious observation about Instagram.
As for annoying Facebook people with Instagram photos… I take joy in that. I like to think of it as payback for all the damn Farmville requests 😉
The more Facebook branches out into other areas the more likely I am to delete my profile. Now they’ve hired ex-Apple employees to make a phone. Ugh!!!