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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