Facebook
just relaunched Slingshot, which is commonly referred to among average users and industry types as the social giant’s Snapchat clone.
Among other relatively minor changes intended to
simplify functionality, it now requires just two taps to share full-screen photos and looping videos.
Also, when users “pull down” their cameras, they will now see a grid of the
most recent content from the past day.
“We’ve also made it easier than ever to move between shots, reactions, people and the camera with our new swipeable tab design,”
Slingshot’s design team explained a blog post.
Encouraging more “personal and creative” conversations, Slingshot is also letting users filter, draw all over, and caption
their reaction shots, as well as preview those reaction shots before sending them to other users.
According to Forrester, Snapchat remains the most popular disappearing messaging service,
while other start-ups — including Whisper, Secret, PostSecret, sixbillionsecrets — continue to take market share.
Last year, Facebook tried to usurp the disappearing message space
by offering a reported $3 billion for Snapchat. When that deal failed to materialize, it built its own service, Slingshot, which it officially debuted this past summer.
Encouraging more
interactions — and trying to distinguish itself from Snapchat — Slingshot originally required recipients to send messages of their own before viewing incoming messages. (Like Snapchat, the
messages effectively disappear after they’ve been viewed.)
In August, Facebook’s Instagram unit debuted a Snapchat-like service named Bolt in select overseas markets, including New
Zealand, Singapore and South Africa.