Will Facebook Take On Instagram With Photo Filters?
Source: Leslie Horn
Facebook could be taking on Instagram. The company is reportedly planning to add a variety of photo filters to its mobile app.
The New York Times claims it spoke with two Facebook engineers who say the project has been in the works for a while, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to wait until his engineers and artists have created more filters before the feature is released.
According to the engineers, Facebook will debut about a dozen filters, some that are new and others that are similar to the filters used by Instagram, in hopes of luring users away from the popular photo sharing iOS app.
While Facebook is the most-downloaded iPhone app of all time, Instagram has had a meteoric rise since its launch in October. After just 10 months in the App Store, Instagram already has more than eight million users who have uploaded more than 150 million images, and it’s still exclusive to iOS. The Times says Facebook made a failed attempt at acquiring Instagram this summer.
Neither Facebook nor Instagram would comment on the rumors.
Instagram could soon meet competition from Apple as well when the company releases iOS 5 this fall. Earlier this month, TechCrunch discovered code within a developer version of the updated platform that suggest Apple will add photo effects to the iPhone’s camera.
The camera on the iPhone 4 is already popular; data from Flickr recently revealed that it’s the most-used camera on the service, and there’s evidence that people are beginning to use the iPhone’s built-in camera as their primary camera. Its quality might get better with the iPhone 5, too. It’s rumored that Apple’s fifth-gen smartphone will come with an 8GB camera.
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