Facebook developing camera app similar to Snapchat: Here’s why

The company is also planning a feature that allows a user to record video through the app to begin live streaming, the newspaper reported. Facebook declined to comment on the report.

The move does hint that recent reports of drop in personal sharing do have Facebook worried, notes WSJ. The articles says that while users are logging into Facebook multiple times a day, there are “fewer” updates, photo shares, etc and “reversing this trend is a growing priority within the company.”

Earlier Facebook had launched an app called SlingShot, and a Camera app for users, which didn’t really take off with users. Facebook also has a Moments app, which lets users share photos privately with their friends and family.

According to The Information, Facebook’s “total sharing had declined by about 5.5% year over the year,” for mid-2015, and overall original broadcast sharing was “down 21 per cent year on year”.

Another report by Bloomberg said that Facebook employees are calling this decline a “context collapse”, and pointed out that more personal sharing has shifted to “smaller audiences”, such as apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Snapchat itself has emerged as a new mode of story-telling for users, and many celebrities too now engage with their followers on the app itself.  Facebook has emerged as a platform more for news-links, one that publishers see as a possible source of traffic and revenue thanks to the Instant Article format.

We’ll have to wait and see when this Snapchat-rival from Facebook launches.

With Reuters Inputs

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