Facebook Launches New iPhone App Dedicated to Posting and Sharing Photos

[Porco]

That reminds me, I haven't played on my Nintendo GameCube in a while.

 

[sniffies]

Uh, because it is not integrated within ios, ie you cannot share a photo without opening up a separate app.

A source familiar with the chain of the events attributes the Ping debacle to a disagreement over iOS 4. Apple had fully integrated Facebook into the iPhone and iPad’s operating system, and was ready to launch the mobile-social fusion when API negotiations broke down. Apple, lacking confidence in Facebook’s ability to build a great application, asked to build its own Facebook for iPhone app. Facebook responded with a firm no. Negotiations came to halt.

It's clearly Facebook's fault, NOT Apple's or iOS's.

 

[qijianjonathan]

Why doesn't Facebook just fix their main app?

 

[Reach9]

Just for your information, don't you think the ads which are displayed in Facebook in those countries are custom made for those countries?
I am an expat living in Indonesia and there are lots of opportunities for companies to sell their stuff.
Just a few examples.

People (or "poor" people) here tend to believe that illness can be solved by cheap over the counter "medicine"
But then again, "poor" people don't use Facebook do they?

In Manaco Facebook might show a Ferrari Add since there are many rich people, yet here it might be an add for potable drinking water.

Mobile phones are big in Developing countries, adds for them seem to work quite well.


Overall I do agree with your posts though.

Of course I know that ads are custom made, that's the whole point of Facebook for advertisers. But again.. how many people actually click on ads?

Yes, the pre-paid market is huge there, however Facebook still hasn't been able to monetize from ads on mobile, so that's a big problem for them.

Apparently Facebook is working on it's own web browser (privacy?), so we'll see where they go from here.

When are you people going to get out of this narrow-minded view of the world? If you see how Egyptians use Facebook (and what for) then may be you will learn something. Rarely is it used for "texting" or "what you ate today?". Political figures and many activists use Facebook exclusively to communicate with Egyptians. Heck, the whole revolution started from a single Facebook event. And to this date, every single Egyptian I have on my friend list, 99.9% of their posts are of political nature. Whether is a comment, photo, video, or sharing of a post on some page.

A friend of mine had cancer and he was keeping all his friends (me included) up to date from time to time with how it was going. It is practically impossible to know anything otherwise because HE decides when he can tell people.

Others use Facebook to ask for blood donations or helping find the mum of a lost child or what not. There are thousands and thousands of diverse posts in my news feed that are a 180 degrees opposite to the image you paint of what Facebook is.

I am not saying every single post on Facebook is for a cause, there are funny videos, articles, and photos of lolcats too. But Facebook is used differently by different people. And, to me and million others it is actually pretty damn useful.

The world doesn't revolve around you. And so doesn't Facebook.

I agree, Facebook is a truly useful way of connecting with your family and friends.

Yes, a Facebook message started the Egyptian revolution.. but let's remember that social media as a whole played a huge part (like Facebook and Twitter) and not just specifically Facebook.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/05/the_egyptian_revolution_dominated_twitter_this_year

When it comes down to it.. Facebook is as good as the people you're "friends" with. You might be friends with a lot of resourceful people, but not everyone is. Therefore, the experience differs per person.
How many out of the 900M actually use it as a resourceful tool?
Facebook's mission is to connect people, that's very open ended and therefore has different meaning for different people.

So you can't blame people for thinking that Facebook is a waste of time.

Twitter is the same thing, if you follow Kim Kardashian, then you'll get that kind of information. However, clearly Twitter is used more by specific businesses and media than Facebook. Which makes sense because of it's ability to quickly and easily share information.

 

[ipedro]

What a useless, badly designed piece of crap. You can only post to your own page, not pages you admin - that's LESS functionality than the standard Facebook app. Plus, that feed of photos other people post is redundant to the FB app. Deleted it in two minutes - a new record.

It's like the people at Facebook don't ever use Facebook.

There's a "Pages" app that does exactly that. It allows you to manage everything on your Facebook Pages -- including adding, tagging and managing photos.

 

[blow45]

I don't know why everyone is wishing that facebook had one great app...

You guys should open your eyes and see what they're doing. They're trying to infiltrate iOS in every way possible, and I think it's brilliant.

Their standard facebook app sucks, but Faceboook Messenger is great simply because of how lightweight and fast it is. When I was using my iPhone abroad (where texting is ridiculously expensive), Facebook Messenger replaced the standard Messeges app for me (this was pre-iMessage days) and I loved it.

This camera app is also incredible. Those of you who have used it I'm sure will agree that it's fast and easy to use, and lays out your photo feed in a very simple, easy to use way (thank you Instagram developers). This app is designed to replace your standard camera app. Every picture you take doesn't automatically upload to facebook until you decide it should, but they DO all go to the camera roll. This is the standard Camera app + Social connectivity and I think it's brilliant.

Facebook is rolling out multiple apps to keep them lightweight and focused, and this is in fact very Apple of them.

Steve Jobs always said "Stick to doing a few things, and do them really well" and that is the philosophy behind these multiple facebook apps. The camera app does photos and sharing REALLY well. The messages app does messaging REALLY well. The all in one facebook app will never be as good as these standalone apps because of the sheer fact that facebook does way too much for a single app to handle.

Lastly, if everyone is complaining about having to have a "facebook" folder, why not try to put the camera app in your photography folder, and your facebook messenger app in your messaging/communication/IM folder? Why do they all need to be grouped together? Point is they don't, and facebook is smart for realizing this.

My emphasis:
That's what people are saying here, they should stick to what they do best, abusing people's private data and selling it to advertisers.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Of course I know that ads are custom made, that's the whole point of Facebook for advertisers. But again.. how many people actually click on ads?

There are different compensation methods for internet ads. Some companies don't care if you click, they just pay for exposure. Just like if I see a Jack in a Box commercial on TV, I'm not gonna automatically go to Jack in a Box. But that network was still paid to run that commercial

The global online ad market is worth something like 60 billion. US market alone is 30+ billion. In the US, Google is the market leader at 40%. Facebook owns something like 6% of the market and is climbing while companies like Yahoo are dropping. Meanwhile the whole online ad market is forecasted to eclipse the television ad market by 2016

So the market is real and there's a lot of money to be made

Yes, the pre-paid market is huge there, however Facebook still hasn't been able to monetize from ads on mobile, so that's a big problem for them.

FB has a lot of room for improvement. Their mobile platform is one area. International ad revenue is another.

On the flip side, that also means that it has untapped revenue and room for growth. The fact they're releasing apps like this shows they know their weak spots and are trying to fix them.

Apparently Facebook is working on it's own web browser (privacy?), so we'll see where they go from here.

The biggest parallel to what Facebook could be in 10 years is Google. When it came out, it was nothing but a search engine. As they grew, they had to figure out more ways to draw ad revenue and stay relevent so in the process they created and acquired a ton of worthwhile services and products. They expanded beyond their search engine and now you got everything from Android to Google Earth to gmail to Chrome. Facebook would have to do something similar.

 

[Xytal]

3 facebook apps now? Is that really needed? Why not just make one very good app instead?

Pretty soon I'm going to have to have a folder just called 'facebook'.

Yes, thank god I'm not the only one!

It also bugs me that they have messages show up as notifications in the Facebook app and the Messages app. I hope they sit down and get their... stuff together. The Facebook Camera app actually has a nice UI and is pretty fast... now if they could only bring that to the rest of their apps....

 

[Reach9]

The biggest parallel to what Facebook could be in 10 years is Google. When it came out, it was nothing but a search engine. As they grew, they had to figure out more ways to draw ad revenue and stay relevent so in the process they created and acquired a ton of worthwhile services and products. They expanded beyond their search engine and now you got everything from Android to Google Earth to gmail to Chrome. Facebook would have to do something similar.

This is where we differ. I believe that Facebook is not another Google. Unless Facebook comes out with some revolutionary way we connect with each other, I don't see how Facebook can keep such a crazy valuation.
Can Facebook do something similar to Google? I don't think so.
Facebook is good at connecting family and friends, their strength is social networks. They will have to leverage that to grow into other markets, biggest is mobile.

Now a days, we have so many ways of keeping in touch with friends and family. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr (blogs), Emails, iMessage, BBM, Unlimited Texting, FaceTime, Skype, calling etc.

The tablet market is saturated, the smartphone market is saturated, the web browser market is saturated.
Facebook has made a free app which lets you quickly and easily post pics online to share. That's great! How are they making money from this though? Are there advertisements?

if anything, Google+ has a better chance at profiting from social networking due to the advertisers who are already with Google.
Thus Facebook and Bing are teaming up.

Facebook is counting on user engagement, they need people to keep coming on the site.
What happens when user engagement keeps declining and hits low levels? In the next few years Facebook usage will plateau in Brazil, India and Indonesia, then what?

The market skepticism is a good foreshadowing of the future of Facebook, very skeptical.

 

[Liquorpuki]

The tablet market is saturated, the smartphone market is saturated, the web browser market is saturated.
Facebook has made a free app which lets you quickly and easily post pics online to share. That's great! How are they making money from this though? Are there advertisements?

FB is not in any of those markets. They're in the online ad market, which is showing no signs of slowing down.

Far as how they monetize off that app, I don't know their plans. But one of the goals of that app is give existing users another reason to keep using FB, which retains their customer base and keeps their revenue stream alive

if anything, Google+ has a better chance at profiting from social networking due to the advertisers who are already with Google.

Google Plus:
100 million active users
average time spent per month by each user = 3 mins

Facebook:
900 million active users, forecasted to hit 1 billion this year
average time spent per month by each user = 8 hours

If I'm a company trying to get the word out about my brand, which of these social networks am I gonna pay to run my ads?

Facebook is counting on user engagement, they need people to keep coming on the site.
What happens when user engagement keeps declining and hits low levels? In the next few years Facebook usage will plateau in Brazil, India and Indonesia, then what?

True. This is why I said to be successful, they need to do what Google did and expand/innovate

 

[rexone]

dumb, dumb, dumb

So, they finaly release FaceBook for Pages so those of us who Admin Pages can manage them properly on mobile devices.
Then almost the same time they release the new FaceBook camera app'.
Does the Camera app' allow you to post to your FaceBook Page?
No, only to your personal profile.
Way to go FaceBook - left-hand... right-hand... no idea...

 

[Ping Guo]

FB is not in any of those markets. They're in the online ad market, which is showing no signs of slowing down.

Far as how they monetize off that app, I don't know their plans. But one of the goals of that app is give existing users another reason to keep using FB, which retains their customer base and keeps their revenue stream alive

Actually Facebook average time spent on page views is down a lot. The latest number is 24 seconds. Down from 30-something last year. And don't forget GM's decision to pull their $10 million Fb ad budget. The IPO is now the worst-performing IPO of the past decade. Hardly encouraging.

Their P/E is something like 100:1, and nobody is clear on how they're going to monetize their platform into this ad juggernaut like Google.

Personally I hardly use it any more, and I see that most of my friends' posts have dropped off as well.

 

[Quotenfrau]

What's the resolution of those photos in FB?

Because the iPhone 4 introduced a 5.0 megapixel camera (2592 × 1936 pixels)

 

[canman4PM]

Kim Kardashian or not, you get the same useless status updates on Facebook as well. Since Twitter is really just quick status updates.



The social networking industry isn't really new, it's been around since MySpace and Friendster times (unless you count that as recent), it was just recently labelled as social media/network, which didn't happen before.

Facebook definitely will last longer than MySpace and Friendster for the reasons you stated.
However, user engagement has already started decreasing. North America and UK which were the primary markets are dropping big time, and Brazil, India and Indonesia are were majority of growth is coming from. So from the looks of the business cycle, Facebook has already passed peak in North America and UK, while it has just started growing in the non-developed countries.
At the end of the day, how many people in Brazil, India and Indonesia who have Facebook can afford the things they see in Facebook ads? What purchasing power do they have?
Because Facebook is a company, they need to generate revenue, which is through ads for them. How long will it be until advertisers like GM realize that paying Facebook millions for Facebook ads are useless when they can just open free company group or fan pages, and attract people's attentions there?
How many people actually click on the ads? Also, how many of the 900M users are doubles, triples etc. due to cheating on games like Farmville?

The whole IPO fiasco also showed us that Facebook and it's underwriters hid a lot of negative information from the general public, such as decreasing revenue. They've yet to monetize from mobile. While Facebook has more users, it's engagement in North America and UK are decline big time, and it's advertisers are clearly not giving Facebook as much money as they previously did.

You're right, Facebook is trying to be the only place people go to connect with everyone, and that is a stupid move imo. When someone tries to do too many things, they become really crappy at it. Maybe a niche like LinkedIn and Twitter will last longer because of that.
Just how many more people want a more "open and connected" world, when your private information is being sold in the market already?

I've noticed a significant drop of usage from my 500+ "friends", and i'm sure i'm not the only one.

Agreed, to all of it. I first got on FB about 4-5 years ago and was on it every spare minute for about 6 months. Just like most people I know. Now I'm never on it. Just like most people I know. We got bored. And now that the English-speaking world has gotten bored with FB will it last? Or, like most fads, will it die or become a semi-obscure thing occasionally seen in stores and laughed at/about nostalgicly, like the hula-hoop the kids and I saw in Walmart last week?

----------

When are you people going to get out of this narrow-minded view of the world? If you see how Egyptians use Facebook (and what for) then may be you will learn something. Rarely is it used for "texting" or "what you ate today?". Political figures and many activists use Facebook exclusively to communicate with Egyptians. Heck, the whole revolution started from a single Facebook event. And to this date, every single Egyptian I have on my friend list, 99.9% of their posts are of political nature. Whether is a comment, photo, video, or sharing of a post on some page.

A friend of mine had cancer and he was keeping all his friends (me included) up to date from time to time with how it was going. It is practically impossible to know anything otherwise because HE decides when he can tell people.

Others use Facebook to ask for blood donations or helping find the mum of a lost child or what not. There are thousands and thousands of diverse posts in my news feed that are a 180 degrees opposite to the image you paint of what Facebook is.

I am not saying every single post on Facebook is for a cause, there are funny videos, articles, and photos of lolcats too. But Facebook is used differently by different people. And, to me and million others it is actually pretty damn useful.

The world doesn't revolve around you. And so doesn't Facebook.

Also good points. I think FB is like so many things around. You get out of it what you put into it.

 

[StyxMaker]

Obviously, he omitted "n't" because he cares. LOL

Or, you make it a question-

"I could care less?"

 

[Liquorpuki]

Actually Facebook average time spent on page views is down a lot. The latest number is 24 seconds. Down from 30-something last year. And don't forget GM's decision to pull their $10 million Fb ad budget. The IPO is now the worst-performing IPO of the past decade. Hardly encouraging.

Their P/E is something like 100:1, and nobody is clear on how they're going to monetize their platform into this ad juggernaut like Google.

Personally I hardly use it any more, and I see that most of my friends' posts have dropped off as well.

I don't understand what the context of that sec/pg stat is. It could be that people are getting bored. It could be because of layout changes. It could be because people have faster Internet. It could be because less people play FarmVille. What's the context?

GM withdrawing could be a sign FB ads are not working. Then again, after GM withdrew, Ford called them out and said GM's ads are failing because GM has no clue what it's doing and Ford's FB ads are doing fine. Chrysler hasn't said anything but they haven't withdrawn. So interpret it how you will.

The disastrous things about that IPO are the lawsuits, the Nasdaq delay, and the withholding of information. None of those have to do with the actual company's return drivers. The overpricing actually benefits the company because FB now has a maxed out warchest with which to compete with.

The high P/E mirrors Google. Google's PE debuted at around 70 and shot up to around 190 within 6 months. Back plenty of people were calling it a bubble and nobody could've predicted that a search engine company would be staying relevant by building mobile OS's, solar generating stations, and satellite imagery. Now everyone that was complaining about Google's high PE is eating crow. A high PE is only a problem if a year from now they have nothing to show for it.

Far as people getting bored of FB, hell I'm bored of it and dont log on anymore. But 16% of all Internet traffic consists of Facebook page clicks and the number of active users is forecasted to hit 1 billion this year. That's a bullseye to advertisers so FB's ability to make money is bigger than you or me and what we find boring.

 

[twoodcc]

i know it's another app, but i really like this app. much better than the regular facebook app. that one really needs to be updated

 

[trickness]

There's a "Pages" app that does exactly that. It allows you to manage everything on your Facebook Pages -- including adding, tagging and managing photos.

And it's terrible too!!!!! Have you tried to use it or read the reviews on the App store?