Facebook has been busy with its social networking and other related wars, but it still finds decent time to add in another war. This relates to photo-filter. The social networking giant has announced its plans to roll in a photo filter series which would be for Facebook’s mobile application. On the months to come, this integration would be done. This service of Facebook would be to compete with the popular photo-sharing application, Instagram.
Facebook’s two engineers claim that the feature is ready for quite some time now, the the chief of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg wants the creation of few more filters which would be added into the feature before its out for everyone to use. These two engineers said that they do not have to publicly speak about Facebook’s products which are yet to be announced, so they wished not to be named.
However, their detailed information noted that there would be an introduction of around a dozen photo filters for Facebook. This would include a few which would have resemblance to that of Instagram such as grainy film and old-style camera lenses. The new gen filters would even be introduced by Facebook which would be an additional attraction for users as compared to other photo apps.
Many call this feature addition of Facebook as a direct attack on Instagram. One of the reasons may be as the engineers noted in their detailing. A close detailing from the engineers included that Facebook had tried acquiring Instagram some time back, but the response from Instagram was negative for the social networking giant. However, when co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom was contacted, he preferred not commenting on acquisition talks or Facebook’s future plans to compete with the company. On the other hand, Facebook resisted on commenting too.
Talking about competition, there is more to photo filters war other than just Instagram. Apple has installed a series of eye catchy photo filters for its iOS 5. MG Siegler, of TechCrunch blog earlier this month noted that there would be an integration more likely that these photo filters would get into Apple’s mobile platform directly.
As for Instagram, the company has got fame at a really good pace as it had debut has not even been for a year. In this small time frame, it has hooked up more than eight million users. Benchmark Capital, in February this year, had accounted for funding of $7 million which it raised for Instagram.
Instagram-inspired Facebook feature might be a good one, but the assumed original source, Instagram is a product which is designed beautifully. The competition might be there, but till the new additions to the Facebook app are not really spectacular, Instagram has no real worries.
The thing which stands in favor is undoubtedly its fame, which can still win it for Facebook easily. However, one should not forget that when Facebook tried creating its own version of Foursquare (which is Facebook Places), the recognition was low and it had to finally get Places replaced. That was replaced by ‘Nearby’ which has a number of addition features and can get more attention, but that is still awaited as to would it succeed or no.