At Facebook's developer conference in April 2016 Mark Zuckerberg talked about eventually filming a... [+]
Facebook users are spending less time posting images and text, and more time passively scrolling through other people’s content. More so than the implications for our overall creativity, it’s a problem for Facebook, which needs its 1.5 billion users to keep feeling engaged on the network lest they leave out of boredom. Its latest tactic is developing a Snapchat-like camera app, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, which will let users record video and live stream it to their friends on Facebook.
The feature is said to be in its early stages and may never see the light of day, the Journal adds, citing people close to the project that's being developed by Facebook’s “friend-sharing” team.
Photo sharing on Facebook has declined over the last year or so. Around 37% of users shared photos on the network in the third quarter of 2015, according to market research firm GlobalWebIndex, down from 59% a year earlier.
Facebook must do something about this, but it has struggled to build and promote its own apps in the past. It released photo app Slingshot in December 2014 and another Snapchat-competitor called Poke, which it shutdown in May 2014 after about a year and a half on app stores.
It’s hard to see Facebook finding the kind of traction it needs with a new camera app, though that's not only because of Facebook’s spotty history with apps. App downloads generally have been falling over the last few years, with Americans spending around 80% of their time on smartphones on just three favourite apps, according to recent figures from Comscore.
That trend is underlined by Facebook itself, which recently invited businesses who are struggling to get consumers to download their apps, to set up chatbots on Messenger instead.
Building apps isn’t necessarily a bad idea if Facebook is hedging its bets on where consumers want to spend their time. And if it needs them to create more content for their Newsfeeds, so much the better.
