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Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

sling.me

21–30 of 161 posts

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#21
post #2

The catch is a pretty big deal, and by deal I mean a deal breaker for me. Why do I have to share something back with someone in order to see what they've shared back at me? I understand it's great for engagement but who would use this over Snapchat or Instagram.

It's not really sharing though. It's teasing or playing, much more like Snapchat. You wouldn't use this to share things. It would be too annoying.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#23

HackerNews guys & gals are probably not the audience of the app, but the audience Facebook's aiming at will love it.

Perhaps... but let's not forget about the "Poke" app which was their first run at a Snapchat clone. Anything FB puts out isn't an instant success.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#24
I've downloaded the app (username: minimaxir) and it's somewhat of a usability nightmare, much like the recent Snapchat update. The camera buttons are nearly invisible if you're facing a bright light source. (such as your face, which is a rather common use case with this type of app.) Additionally, there is absolutely no button for the app options: I found them completely by accident by tapping my username.

This is minimalism gone too far.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#25
post #4

Seems like they're trying to create more interaction and it sounds like it would be fun...for the first couple of times. Who really wants to go out of their way to make a new video or photo to see something? We've all become accustomed to the instant gratification that the internet offers, why would we suddenly opt in for a slower experience? Or it will turn into people sharing the same generic useless video / pictur…

I'm actually excited, but only to use this with my GF and I. We do something similar with Hangouts, but this seems more fun due to the video support primarily.

I have yet to find out if the videos are temporary (i hope so)

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#26
This underscores what appears to be an interesting strategic move by Facebook: build an ecosystem of applications, which in turn encourages people to use their other products. In turn, this provides continued competition against Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

The interesting thing about this app is that it's an experiment: viral success of social applications appears to be a hit or miss sort of thing, so why not throw many things at the wall and see what sticks á la Paper, Home, Messenger, or buy something already big á la Instagram or Snapchat.

One benefit of this strategy is that it raises barriers to entry for your competitors: the more modes of social interaction you offer, the fewer opportunities for your competitors to chip away at your empire, and the more enticing your properties become to advertisers.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#27
>> "Mr. Flynn, who said he thought up Slingshot as a way to push his brothers to respond to his photo messages" (From NTY)[1]

What a bad reason to create a product. People don't want to respond to your messages so your create a way to try to force them to respond. Realistically they probably won't care enough to reply and now won't see your messages at all.

[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/facebook-releases-s...

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#29
post #26

This underscores what appears to be an interesting strategic move by Facebook: build an ecosystem of applications, which in turn encourages people to use their other products. In turn, this provides continued competition against Twitter, Tumblr, etc. The interesting thing about this app is that it's an experiment: viral success of social applications appears to be a hit or miss sort of thing, so why not throw many th…

The "barrier to entry" argument would be true if Slingshot was first. Slingshot was created as an attack on Snapchat.

And that's after Facebook's previous attempt to attack Snapchat, Poke, failed miserably.

Re: Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

#30
We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced:

"A new way to share photos and videos"

And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

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