According to recently leaked internal documents, containing roughly 50 MB worth of images and documents, Facebook is getting ready to unveil a new picture sharing app for the iPhone, and presumably for other platforms as well. Details are scarce, but leaked pictures give away a few hints.
As you can tell from the leaked picture (shown below), it looks essentially like a stripped-down version of the official Facebook iPhone app where pictures, which seem to be organized by dates and events, take center stage. There are also three buttons around the button: one in the far left, which appears to be a menu button, presumably leading to some dashboard; one in the middle that looks like a snapshot button; and one on the far right that seems to display the newest photos posted by friends and notify users as they become available.
Other companies have already developed very similar services, with varied degrees of success. Instagram is the first one that comes to mind, along with Color, developed by the founder of Lala, a music company that was sold to Apple back in 2009. Facebook would immediately be at an advantage, thanks to its huge user base and engagement, while other services had to scramble to get their own audience. With its brand recognition, Facebook could become the de facto standard for photo sharing apps, just it already is for social networks. While the leaked screenshots appear to showcase a more stripped down app, many users might just want to get their pictures on the Internet quickly for their friends to see them.
It’s also possible that this concept will later be integrated into a future version of the standard Facebook app, although there’s no way to be sure. The social network giant might instead want to compete with the emerging picture sharing services we mentioned above, which could take the market by storm if well done, but most likely require the app to remain standalone.
Whether this app becomes widely available or not is not yet known, or for which platforms it will be designed for, other than iOS, although Android would be the most obvious guess. We should learn more about this over the next few days as more details emerge. We’ll keep you updated.
(via TechCrunch)
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