Facebook is dead serious about mobile. Today it begins rolling out Facebook Camera for iOS to English-speaking countries, a standalone photos app
where you can shoot, filter, and share single or sets of photos and
scroll through a feed of photos uploaded to Facebook by your friends.
Developed by Facebook’s photos team without the help of Instagram
because the acquisition deal hasn’t closed yet, Facebook Camera looks a
lot like the app TechCrunch leaked images of a year ago, and is designed for quicker publishing than Facebook’s multi-featured primary mobile app.
Facebook Camera
lets you rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and
locations, add a description, and post. While its 14 filters, batch
uploads, and streamlined interface are a big step up from Facebook for
iOS, the design isn’t as beautiful as Instagram and neither are the
photos you’ll see in it. When asked if Facebook Camera would become a
direct competitor to the photosharing network it bought last month,
a spokesman told me “As Mark asserted, we’re committed to building and
growing Instagram independently, so I anticipate some healthy
competition.”
Though for now Facebook Camera is just for iOS in English-speaking
countries (and will become available as soon as Apple can populate the
App Store with it, if you don’t see it already) it will roll out
internationally over the next few weeks as Facebook gets it translated.
As for versions for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, I’m told
“While we don’t comment on future products we are carefuly looking at
what might make for agood Facebook photos experience across other platforms.”
The app’s homescreen includes a camera button for shooting new
photos, and quick access to the last few images in your camera roll for
instant uploading. By default you’ll see a feed of photos from your
friends that’s basically your news feed but only photo posts. You can
also view a feed of just photos you’ve taken or been tagged in. The
feeds update in real time, you can Like with a single click, and the
comment button pops up as an overlay rather than forcing you to load a
separate screen. The browsing experience is smooth, though browsing can
only be done in portrait mode so standard photos appear square with
their sides or top and bottom cut off. You have to click them and
sometimes turn your device to view them in full.
How It’s Better Than Instagram
The best feature of Facebook Camera and its one real selling point
over Instagram is multi-photo uploads. This helps you tell a story or
share the best photos from a day’s outing in a single post. It’s great
for if you can’t decide which shot is best and don’t want to go through
the sharing flow over and over. The feature basically steamrolls Batch, a photosharing app
specifically designed for uploading sets. Browsing multi-photo stories
is smooth too, as they appear as one story in the feed showing the first
photo, but you can swipe side to side to view the rest of the set.
Rather than having to wait for a photo to load when you browse by
like on Instagram, it appears as a blurry placeholder at first and then
sharpens up, which is nice. Facebook Camera’s 14 filters are also more
sensibly named with titles that describe how they change photos, such as
Bright, Emerald, and Copper, rather than Instagram’s less indicative
Hudson, Sutro, and Brannan, though Instagram does have 17 filters plus
light adjustment and tilt-shift that Facebook’s new app lack.
How It’s Worse
Unfortunately, there are several flaws in the current version of
Facebook Camera that seem especially glaring compared to Instagram. Like
and comment icons and counts are overlaid on the photos, disturbing
their appearance. When you click to view existing comments on a photo
they take a few seconds to load, which can fool you into thinking they
aren’t there. But the first thing you might notice is the photos are
decidedly less beautiful than what you’ll see on Instagram. Most weren’t
uploaded with Facebook Camera but rather through Facebook’s web
interface, primary app, or other third-party apps, so they’re
unfiltered, and weren’t necessarily taken with artistry in mind.
While Facebook may be late to the standalone photo app scene, you have to remember that while Instagram has hit 50 million downloads,
Facebook has over 500 million mobile users, and somewhere around 220
million on iOS and Android. As the social network’s user base shifts to
mobile, the app will be crucial to keeping people engaged. Facebook
Camera may not be perfect, but for those who don’t want to start a whole
new social network for photosharing on Instagram, and want an app that
sucks in photos shared by their Facebook friends from anywhere,
including Instagram and Path, Facebook Camera could find a spot on the homescreen.
