Is the Facebook Camera App Worth Using?

Facebook finally launched its long rumored photo app for iOS, called Facebook Camera. For now though, the app is only available from certain App Stores, in other words, it hasn't been made available worldwide for some reason. As of this writing, it's not yet available from the Indonesian App Store.

Word of this app dated back to last year when TechCrunch published details of the app including some screenshots. The released version however, turn out to be quite different from the leaked images, but that's almost a given since it's been a year after all.

Facebook Camera is the second component ripped out of the primary Facebook app, with the first being Messenger. It seems to make sense to have parts of the Facebook app running as their own separate app rather than a collection of functions inside one app. Apps are clearly different from websites in which you can shove all services into one place. With apps, people seem to want speed and focus. Having multiple and directly unrelated services in one app would only serve to bloat the app and slow it down, even though Facebook seems to have managed to make its primary app intuitive and attractive.

The release of Facebook Camera app posed the immediate question of, "Why would Facebook need two different photo apps?" Facebook of course, is waiting for the regulatory approval to acquire the popular photography-based social network Instagram, for a billion dollars. If it has Instagram, why would it need Facebook Camera?

To start with, the work on Facebook Camera began more than a year ago. The company has invested its resources into releasing a standalone camera/photography app long before the Instagram deal was done.

When Mark Zuckerberg decided to purchase Instagram, he didn't do it out of Facebook's need to have a photography app, but to keep Twitter's hands off of it. Twitter had been in talks to acquire Instagram but the two parties hadn't managed to strike a deal yet, so Zuckerberg swooped in with a billion dollars and placed Instagram under Facebook. Zuckerberg pledged to keep Instagram operating independently and would change nothing that made it a popular photo-sharing network. Whether he will keep that promise is anybody's guess though. Of course, the deal has yet to close which means it can still be canceled.

TheNextWeb's Matthew Panzarino speculated that the work on Facebook Camera began when Facebook acquired Sofa, the Dutch software company and according to him, the app has the company's fingerprints. This would mean that the previous app which ended up at the hands of MG Siegler last year may have been replaced or was completely reworked by the team from Sofa.

By simply calling the app Camera, Facebook is probably being cheeky. Just looking at the name, it would be easy to mistake the Facebook app from Apple's own built-in Camera app, although visually, the icon is different enough to be distinct. When you open the app, Facebook Camera takes you to a stream of photos posted by your Facebook friends instead of directly to the camera, so it's one more button to tap, one step further to take a photo compared to Apple's Camera app. On the other hand, people tolerate this approach in Instagram and Path, so perhaps immediacy isn't too much of a concern.

Speaking of Instagram, while Facebook Camera does offer some editing functions including cropping and color correction to match that of Apple's own Camera app, it also offer a slew of color filters, which puts it in direct competition with Instagram. Whether this will affect Instagram remains to be seen but Instagram already has its fans and community and they are very attached to the app, so perhaps there's nothing to worry about in this case, for now.

Apple's own Camera and Photos apps lack that social element. Sure, you can share photos to Flickr, Twitter, email, MMS, but it's like an after thought. There's no way to see what photos your friends in your contacts list have taken, no way to comment on them or to rate them. When the photos are synced to iCloud, it stays there in a silo that only you can access. iCloud right now is more of a backup service than a sharing platform. iCloud's previous iteration, MobileMe, let you share photos on a website and other people can subscribe to them. With iOS 6 coming soon and given Apple's deep relationship with Twitter, this may develop further beyond what we see in iOS 5.

In terms of being social, Apple's photography apps need a lot of work, but they do their jobs well and efficiently. The apps are highly focused on what they were built to do, so perhaps adding a social layer on it would take that focus away. For those who prefer to have that social layer though, Facebook Camera would fill that need. It is also more practical in terms of taking and browsing photos than having to use the primary Facebook app. After all, Facebook is the number one photo sharing service in the world having hosted more than 70 billion photos, it would be silly not to have its own photo app.

So, the question now is, will you be using Facebook's Camera app once it's available on your App Store?