This is fantastic. I hope Facebook continues with the break-apps-up strategy, because it makes a lot more sense for mobile. On mobile, you have less screen real estate, a less precise pointing device (fat fingers vs. a mouse), and you're generally shorter on time, especially compared to when you're wasting time on Facebook on your laptop. All these things mean that simpler apps with fewer UI elements and with a single clear purpose are much better on mobile. I already use Messeger alone as much as the actual Facebook app, which is disastrously unwieldy. Here's hoping we see events and contacts as the next apps. Games is also probably a big priority.
Introducing Facebook Camera
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Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#52The style reminds me a lot of Google+. It's good that they're willing to accept design inspiration from outside Facebook.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#53Since this app seems to directly "compete" with the Instagram app, I wonder if their goal is to get rid of Instagram completely.
when you read stuff like this one [1], you may think that working on 2 photo apps at the same time make sense, until dust settle.
[1] http://www.donnaklinenow.com/investigation/instagram-scam
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#54Bad news for Batch from Dailybooth (YC S09). They focus on uploading photos in batches. http://batch.com/
I see this as an inflection point for them. Pivot or die. Hopefully they'll do the former, and reach new heights.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#55There're pros and cons.
Breaking apps up feels smart—it's like Unix. But otherwise you have more overhead, more apps and more updates. But I guess the app quality would heavily benefit because then the devs have to fulfill just one use case and by focussing on one thing the overall app quality might be better.
They could also introduce a system similar to web bookmarks: one app and many entry points—or like a command line app which does different things by adding options. Android widget often fill this gap offering different entry points into one app.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#56Bad news for Batch from Dailybooth (YC S09). They focus on uploading photos in batches. http://batch.com/
I see this as an inflection point for them. Pivot or die. Hopefully they'll do the former, and reach new heights.
The just pivoted less than a year ago from DailyBooth to Batch.
(The team is awesome, though, so I'm not worried about them.)
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#57UX bug that is actually fairly glaring when it comes down to it: I searched for "Facebook Camera" in the app store, but because it is so new, it is not there (ok, seems normal) I went to the site and clicked "Text link to my phone", phone number already filled out, text went through fine (so far so good) Clicked on the link, but facebooks mobile detection caught it before the redirect happened, didn't know how to han…
It was on the Featured page on the App Store for me.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the iOS paradigm to make feature simple standalone apps. Why do you think Apple has both a "Photo Album" and "Camera" app? And both a "Phone" and "Contacts" app? Many users upload photos to Facebook, so there's a huge incentive to make an app that makes it simple to do this. Even if the main Facebook app has feature parity with FBPhotos, it's still going to come with all of the cruft.
It's somewhat in following with the Unix paradigm; do one thing, do it well.
Not always. Regarding core Unix commands yes (like 'ls', 'cat') but look for example at 'git' which is a real beast.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#59I really don't see the point of separate apps. The main Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Photos...what's next? Anyone who can enlighten me why this would be a good strategy? Seems like unnecessary fragmentation to me.
It's the iOS paradigm to make feature simple standalone apps. Why do you think Apple has both a "Photo Album" and "Camera" app? And both a "Phone" and "Contacts" app? Many users upload photos to Facebook, so there's a huge incentive to make an app that makes it simple to do this. Even if the main Facebook app has feature parity with FBPhotos, it's still going to come with all of the cruft.
This.
Two things people do that FB wants channeled through their systems: Photos & Chat.
Replacing your camera app with FBs means that all photos go to Facebook, which also represents the most important content on Facebook.
If your photos and your friends photos are all on FB then they go to FB.
If everyone you know is on FB then you'll probably use FB to talk to them. Thus, the chat ecosystem. Because FB is device and OS agnostic, it works even better than what Apple is trying to do with iMessage.
So why separate apps? Because people today already do these things as separate apps. You take a photo with your camera and then upload to FB. Now you just take a photo. This is actually what Google does with G+ and its automatic photo uploads. But FB can't do that, because they don't own the device ecosystem so this is their technique...for now.
Re: Introducing Facebook Camera
#60How interesting: I installed and launched the app expecting to see the standard "Log in with Facebook" screen, but instead there's a big button that says "Continue as [my name]" (and a smaller one, "Not you?"). I wonder how exactly they're doing this, and if it will make its way into 3rd-party apps. It made the first launch experience quite seamless.
On iPhone you can share secrets between apps by the same developer if there are signed in the same way, there is no easy way to do it across apps.