Facebook has dropped two apps on us today, first was the update to their Windows Phone app, which brought new functionality, like the ability to “like” comments to even letting users delete posts or comments. But now they’ve added a new iOS app called, Facebook Camera.
I know what you thinking? Why create a new camera app, when they just spent a billion dollars on Instagram? This app isn’t so much as a replacement for Instagram, as it is a way for users to take quick pictures, toss on a filter and share a bunch of them with your Facebook friends all at once. Currently, the Facebook app for iOS only allows users to upload one image at a time. With Facebook Camera, users can take pictures with the app, but they can also view their camera roll, select several pictures, leave a comment and tap upload, it’s fast and easy and in just a few seconds, that batch of images is live on Facebook.
As I briefly mentioned, Facebook Camera does offer filters, which yes, is like Instagram, but the major difference is that unlike Instragram, Facebook Camera won’t allow images to be shared with other social networking services, like Twitter, Tumblr, and others.
I tried the app out, briefly before writing this post and I have to say the app is nicely done. It’s polished, quick and works really well. The only thing that irritated me is that like Instagram, Facebook Camera doesn’t support the “volume up” button as a dedicated camera shutter button. This is something that every camera app should have, it’s in the API, so there’s no reason not to have it.
The app is free and if you have a Facebook account (who doesn’t) and your cell number is attached, you can have Facebook send you a link, via a text message, to the app, assuming you can’t find it in the app store, here. The app is only available for iOS, as of right now, but we can’t imagine that Facebook isn’t working on a version for Android and Windows Phone.