In a showcase of what would be the utter lack of creativity, social media giant, Facebook today launched three new features of which a few seemed to directly borrowed from competitor Snapchat
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Facebook introduced Camera, Stories and Direct, new features, that would be available globally later this week.
The boring old Facebook camera now gets Camera Effects, that should make it easier to share what’s on your mind without the need for you to type anything down. The new “effects” that are similar to what Snapchat calls “filters” lets your camera app do the talking and adds dozens of effects like masks, frames and interactive filters that one can apply to both their photos and videos.
These are not just static effects, but reactive effects that let you interact with the dynamic objects, like falling snow, in your video in real time. The social network for now is focussed just on the user experience, but is willing to take on board sponsors like it has done with its Messenger stickers in the past. The current selection of effects include Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village and Wonder Woman. Facebook even has plans to introduce custom frames that can be created by the community but the same will arrive in the coming months and not with the current roll out.
Stories is another much-awaited feature that basically lets you share multiple photos and videos as a part of a visual collection that is not a part of your News Feed. Your Stories will appear at the top of your News Feed and won’t appear in your Timeline or News Feed unless you post them. Tap the “Your Story” icons to get started.
Direct is a way to share your photos and videos with specific friends but for a limited time. Now, where have we seen that before? Ah well, on Snapchat of course.
Send your photo or video via Direct and you friends will be able to view it once and replay it or reply to it. The ephemeral messaging service will delete your shared photo and video once the stream ends and the content will no longer be visible under Direct.
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