Facebook’s year-old New Product Experimentation (NPE) division, where developers are tasked with building unique and experimental tools, has released its fourth app, according to The Information. Called Hobbi, the new app, as its name suggests, allows users to document and keep tabs on the progress of their personal projects or hobbies.
You can easily mistake Hobbi for a Pinterest clone, as much of its design is clearly inspired by the photo-sharing social network. But Hobbi is a more personal platform and doesn’t even have a social networking component. Facebook bills it as a place where you can “capture and organize your creative process.” The app lets you sort pictures of your projects in various collections such as home decor, fitness, music, and what have you.
On top of that, Hobbi can compile all those photos into a highlight reel that you can externally share on other platforms such as Instagram. The app also has a fairly minimalistic interface and you won’t find a whole lot of editing options either other than the essential annotation tools.
Incidentally, Hobbi’s launch comes just a few weeks after Google’s own experimental app team, Area 120 introduced Tangi, a short-form video app for sharing DIY and creativity videos. Pinterest over the years, despite the meteoric rise of TikTok and Instagram, has been able to consistently survive by catering to a niche yet significant audience. Facebook and Google, with Tangi and Hobbi, are likely going after that and topple Pinterest’s dominance in the creative space.
Facebook Hobbi, for now, is an iOS-exclusive app and available in a handful of regions including the United States, Columbia, Belgium, Spain, and Ukraine. You can download it for free from the App Store.
Apart from Hobbi, NPE has launched three other apps: A bare-bones meme-making app called Whale that lets you create your own memes, a music sharing service for youngsters titled Aux and Bump, an anonymous, local social networking platform. However, none of these apps’ abilities have yet made it to Facebook’s flagship apps such as Instagram.
