After accidentally rolling out and removing its Snapchat competitor app from Apple's App Store last week, Facebook, on June 17th, 2014, officially unveiled Slingshot, an app from its Creative Labs division.
"Earlier today, we accidentally released a version of Slingshot, a new app we’re working on," said a Facebook spokesperson. "With Slingshot, you'll be able to share everyday moments with lots of people at once. It'll be ready soon and we’re excited for you to try it out."
Facebook accidentally launched Slingshot, its attempt at creating a Snapchat competitor. Before being removed, the app that briefly appeared in the App Store was only available to users in certain countries. Now, the social giant is ready to take on Snapchat for the second time.
Slingshot is an app that allows users to send disappearing photo and video messages. Users can send photos or videos up to 15 seconds long, and once those messages are viewed and cleared by the recipient, they disappear from the recipient's phone for good. The only catch: Users are required to respond (reciprocate and "sling" something back) with an image or video in order to "unlock" those they received. For example, if a user is receiving a message from a friend, they'll need to send a message back to that friend to open that message sent earlier.
"What we found is that you don't feel the need to respond immediately," said Slingshot design lead Joey Flynn. "It's more [like], I want to share what I'm up to whenever I can, and then they're going to feel almost no pressure to share back whatever they're doing because it's a shared experience."
While the app is similar to Snapchat, Slingshot has few features that set the two apart. Unlike Snapchat, messages sent through Slingshot don't disappear/self-destruct after 10 seconds. Images and videos can only be viewed once, but the duration of that viewing period is up to the recipient. During this viewing period, the recipient could take a screen grab of an image, saving it as a file before the actual message is wiped from the app. And unlike Snapchat, the message creator will not receive an alert if someone they send a message captures a screenshot.
Just like Snapchat, the app will automatically starts the phone's camera when it's launched. The three standard camera controls are "Flash", "Shoot" and "Selfie". Once a photo is taken, the user is taken to the retouch view, where the user can retake the photo or use the previous shot, and add a caption. Users can also doodle with the image with Draw that launches a color picker. Videos are looped and limited to 15 seconds.
Username, location and time of when the shot was taken are automatically added to the header.
After the user is done creating their shot, they can then hit "use", which will bring a list of friends that use Slingshot. After the photo or video is sent as a message, the content of it that is "locked" appear pixelated. The recipient(s) needs to respond before being able to see the content of the message.
When asked why they thought the reciprocal part of the app was important, Flynn explains that: "what it does is that it makes it so that everyone feels that they're involved in the community. When you share something, you know you're going to get some stuff back, and you're also unlocking stuff [...] There's this cool connectedness you get from that. It makes you feel close with the people you're slinging shots with."
Facebook that is notorious for its large collection of user information said that security and privacy is important for users as well as it is for the company. Facebook said that once a user viewed and discard a message, they won't be able to see it again on their phone. Once a message has been viewed by each recipient, Facebook will then delete it from its servers after a seven day grace period; a period where users can report the said message as inappropriate. If the message is not opened in 30 days, Facebook considers it read and will delete the message from its servers a week later.
Slingshot requires its users to be 100 percent active in participation. This necessity is what made the app unique if compared to other social app on the market where users can just be a viewer.
"It's an app where everybody's a creator and nobody's just a spectator," said Will Ruben, Slingshot's Product Manager. "That sort of dynamic creates a space where there's really low pressure to create, because when everybody's a creator, there's no pressure behind creating."
Crushing - Acquiring - Building
Slingshot was started in one of Facebook's Hackathons in 2013, where employees were encouraged to come up with new ideas for Creative Labs apps. The division that encouraged people to come up with innovative ideas, exists outside the core of Facebook's ecosystem. Creative Labs is Facebook's way to explore new forms of social connections. It's first product was Paper, a dedicated news reading app that's more immersive and visually appealing than the company's original offering. After testing it for several days, Facebook decided that Slingshot would be the second standalone app. A team of 10 people started to work full-time in January 2014.
As a dedicated standalone app, Slingshot users don't need a Facebook account to use it. Accounts are tied to a user's mobile number. Once an username is created, contacts can be imported from the phone's contact or the user's Facebook account.
Facebook has taken an interest in ephemeral messaging for years. In 2012, the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, in which Zuckerberg threatened to crush Snapchat with Poke. However, Poke failed and Zuckerberg wanted to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion which was turned down by its founders.
Slingshot is what is becoming a robust collection of standalone apps owned by Facebook. The social giant that acquired messaging app WhatsApp in February, attempts to break up the components of its online platform into separate, single-serving mobile apps, just like Google. Facebook Messenger, for chatting; Facebook's Paper, for reading and discovering new content; Facebook, for sharing and keeping up with updates from friend's activities; and the failed Facebook Poke and Facebook Camera apps (now replaced by Instagram). But unlike Google, Facebook's numerous apps overlap their features with one another.