Skip to main content

Facebook is borrowing from Snapchat … yet again

snapchat
dennizn/123RF
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Snapchat should be tickled pink at this point by Facebook’s multiple attempts to emulate its style. In its latest attempt to “innovate,” Facebook is once again “borrowing” from the much younger social media platform, this time testing out a new feature that lets users take selfies and record videos complete with filters, effects, and masks, which can be shared in your News Feed. And your clips disappear in 24 hours too (assuming no one responds).

Facebook isn’t making any attempts to hide this new Snapchat-esque addition either, placing it front and center in its main app for users in Ireland. Should it prove popular among the Irish populace, Zuckerberg may decide to go wide with the feature, introducing it to the social network’s 1.4 billion monthly users.

Related Videos

While the feature has yet to adopt a formal name, it might as well be called Snapchat 2.0. To access it, users (in Ireland) need only to tap on the camera icon in the top left corner of the Facebook app, and voila! They’ll have access to all the features of the new content machine.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, the new camera was designed to address two trends Facebook saw across its user base — first, that people are sharing more photos and videos, and second, that they want to share them only with specific individuals. And as Chris Cox, Facebook’s product chief, noted earlier this week, the team is “very invested” in making the camera “a creative tool.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Facebook currently has any particularly creative or original ideas of its own when it comes to making said tool.

So if you’re a Snapchat user, things in Facebook are about to look very familiar. And if you’re not, well, consider yourself converted.

Editors' Recommendations

Elon Musk says Twitter will launch pricier Blue tier free of ads
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

Elon Musk said on Sunday that Twitter is planning to offer a higher-priced Blue subscription that will have zero ads.

Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022 in a deal worth $44 billion, didn’t say how much the new tier will cost, nor when it will launch.

Read more
Twitterrific shuts down after being blocked by Twitter
The Twitterrific bird.

The maker of Twitterrific, a third-party Twitter app for macOS and iOS that launched in 2007 and came to the iPhone before Twitter itself, has been left with no choice but to close it down.

In a message posted on its website on Thursday, The Iconfactory, Twitterrific's developer, said: "We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter -- a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”

Read more
Twitter finally confirms it’s behind outage of third-party Twitter apps
A stylized composite of the Twitter logo.

Twitter has finally confirmed what everyone pretty much already knew -- that it’s behind the outage of popular third-party Twitter clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific.

In a message posted on its Twitter Dev account for developers, the company said: “Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working.” But it declined to offer any details about what API rules the developers of the third-party apps have violated.

Read more