Skip to footer

Facebook Camera for iPhone takes best of Instagram

Facebook has released a photo-sharing app called Facebook Camera. So how does it stack up with Instagram? 

|
Reuters
Facebook Camera, a new photo-sharing app, comes on the heels of Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram. Here, the loading screen of Facebook is seen on a range of devices.
  • By Matthew Shaer

A little over a month after Facebook acquired photo-sharing hub Instagram for a reported $1 billion, the newly-public social network has released its own mobile photo app called Facebook Camera. Camera works a whole lot like Instagram: Users can snap and share photos with a few swipes of the finger, or edit the images with a range of speciality filters. 

"When you launch the app, you'll see a feed of just great photos from the people you care about," Facebook reps wrote in a press release. "You can swipe to see more of any album or tap to enlarge an individual photo." Facebook Camera is currently available on the iPhone; versions for Android and other mobile operating systems may follow, although Facebook is keeping mostly mum. 

So how does Facebook Camera stack up against Instagram? Well, over at Gizmodo, Sam Biddle has run a pretty comprehensive side-by-side test of both apps. Verdict: Instagram, by dint of a few added virtual filters, has a slight edge in the photo-taking department. But Facebook Camera makes uploading and sharing photographs easier, which is why most of us use an app such as Instagram or Camera in the first place. 

"So long as Facebook remains the social gold standard online it makes sense for it to be the central place for your photos," Biddle writes. He adds: "With Camera, Facebook's back to being a one stop shop. Any argument for Instagram to the contrary is just contrarianism; the urge of the cool kid to do something unconventional and away from the crowd for its own sake. It's time to give in." 

In recent months, photo and video sharing apps have soared in popularity. According to a recent report by analytics company Flurry, which tracked downloads on all the major mobile operating systems, the photo and video apps category grew by 89 percent between October of last year and March of this year. For the first time since the 2008 launch of the Apple App Store, Flurry reps wrote, "the Games category found itself rivaled by another category." 

Not a bad time for Facebook to get into the game. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Facebook Camera for iPhone takes best of Instagram
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0525/Facebook-Camera-for-iPhone-takes-best-of-Instagram
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe