Facebook Set To Release New Photo Messaging App

Facebook is reportedly developing an in-house version of the Snapchat mobile app, the self-destructing photo messaging service.

Snapchat, a unique photo messaging service which has grown in popularity over the last year, allows its users to choose a time limit on how long their photo messages appear in the recipient’s inbox.

Normally, the photos last a matter of seconds before they are permanently deleted from the sender’s phone, the recipient’s phone and the Snapchat servers.

Facebook currently has four unique apps: Facebook Mobile, Camera, the recently updated Messenger and the self-branded Instagram.
If Facebook’s new app doesn’t catch on, they could feasibly purchase Snapchat, just as they acquired Instagram in September. It would, after all, be far less expensive than Instagram’s $735 million price tag.



Facebook’s decision to move into the self-deleting photo messaging market comes only a fortnight after Om Malik reported that Snapchat, which delivers around one thousand messages a second, is about to receive a rumoured valuation of $50 million after Benchmark Capital’s $8 million venture round.

“We haven’t heard anything from Mark [Zuckerberg] about a Snapchat clone,” said Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel in response to the news. “We’re big fans of Instagram and the Facebook platform and we look forward to watching Mark continue to innovate and grow his company.”

Do you think a photo messaging service like Snapchat is a good investment for Facebook?
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New Facebook Privacy Settings Rolled Out To Users

New privacy and sharing settings will be distributed to Facebook users by the end of the year.
A Facebook release has said that: “We continue to strive toward three main goals: bringing controls in context where you share, helping you understand what appears where as you use Facebook, and providing tools to help you act on content you don't like.”

The sharing platform has released a preview of some of the new options that can be seen in the menu.
Privacy settings could previously be found under different menu paths but will soon all be organised into one place called Privacy Shortcuts.
A new looking Activity Log will let users see more information on their personal data, their photos and all sorts of details regarding their Facebook activity.



A Request Removal Tool has been put into place so that users can ask for photos they disapprove of to be taken down by the person who uploaded them.

If a user should choose to hide something from their Timeline, Facebook will notify them if the content may still be shown in news feeds, searches, or anywhere else on the site.



Also, Facebook apps will have to make two separate requests to gain access to your personal information and post it to your Facebook account.
All users should be seeing these changes by the end of 2012.

What do you think about the privacy updates? Have you had any issues before?
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Facebook Search Bar Can Take You To Specific App Centre Categories

The Facebook search bar now searches for App Centre categories which will lead users straight to those particular sections of the App Centre.

The ability to do so doesn’t seem to have been available since the introduction of the App Centre in June, but Facebook has since introduced a search option within the App Centre which gives users the ability to finds apps by using keywords such as “sport” or “games”.

Only recently has a discovery been made of users being able to use the main Facebook search bar to find specific App Centre categories.

The search bar allows users to go straight to the “games” or “mobile apps” sections and will show different app categories such as action games, card games, puzzle games, photo apps, lifestyle apps and many more that can be found via the main search bar.

The search bar is generally used for Facebook users to find other people, pages and to get around the site. For instance, users can navigate quickly to their photos, notes, friends lists, Help Centre and others.

Adding App Centre categories to the search bar could point more users towards the App dashboard with it already getting 220 million visitors per month.

Are you glad that you can now access the App Centre via the main search bar?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below