Author: Sharon Gaudin / Source: CIO Credit: Facebook Facebook's latest moves take yet another page from Snapchat, and the company may ne
Facebook’s latest moves take yet another page from Snapchat, and the company may need to figure out how to become innovative again.
Playing catch-up with competitors is a good thing but it doesn’t replace Facebook building new features that users can’t get anywhere else.
“Facebook needs to understand what their second act is going to be,” said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, who added that copying Snapchat shows Facebook’s own lack of innovation. Otherwise, he said, “they’ll eventually start losing users — and their whole value is tied up in the size of the community.”
A few eyebrows were raised when Facebook announced yesterday it was adding a few new features to its apps.
Some of those features – including masks and disappearing messages — will look very familiar to Snapchat users.
This week Facebook users began to see a new in-app camera, on both iOS and Android, being rolled out. To find it, users can tap on the camera icon on the top left corner of the Facebook app or swipe right from News Feed.
The Facebook camera is “packed with dozens of effects like masks, frames and interactive filters that you can apply to your photos and videos,” wrote Connor Hayes, a Facebook product manager, in a blog post. “Reactive effects let you interact with dynamic objects — like falling snow — and style effects apply an artistic filter to your video in real time, letting you turn your everyday selfie into a Picasso-style work of art.”
And for users…
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