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Why Facebook Camera Matters

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Facebook launched a mobile camera app.

You may be wondering why Facebook launched a mobile camera app (quaintly called, Camera) just a short while after purchasing Instagram in a heart-stopping billion dollar acquisition. Everywhere you turn online, there is discourse about this app. Most of the discourse is a quizzical wonder as to why Facebook would even bother (especially because many people think that it is inferior to Instagram’s capabilities).

Facebook Camera is not for you.

If you have Instagram, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for you. If you read this blog, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for. Facebook wants more and more people taking and sharing pictures (one of the biggest and most important functionalities of the online social network), and they’re smart enough to know that trying to get more and more people to join Instagram (another online social network) is probably a lot harder than launching a camera app that automatically syncs up to your Facebook profile. Facebook’s new camera app is for everybody else. It’s not for us.

It’s a mobile world.

You know it. I know it. Facebook knows it. Putting the IPO issues to the side and the many challenges that the company will now face as a public one, Facebook Camera demonstrates that the company is both serious about mobile and that it’s going to do everything it can to move forward fast. This speed is crucial because we are quickly leaving the browser-based/web-based Internet as we have known it to date, into a world of hyper-connected individuals who are highly untethered (no more fixed stations).

Facebook Camera is for everyone.

Will it be a raging success? It’s way too early to call. Should Facebook have simply integrated Instagram? Who knows? Regardless, this camera app has allowed them to take another step into the mobile world with something that everyone – who is already connected on Facebook – can use (in a very fast and simple way). It’s hard to see a downside in this move. My only critical comments are for those online who are quick to judge as if everything and anything that is released should be aimed at the early adopters or more sophisticated users. Remember: the majority of people use the cameras that came with their mobile devices. The majority are not early adopters. The majority are not all that sophisticated with their technology. If Facebook Camera makes it dead easy to take, play with and share photos, this could become a runaway success…

Whether us eager beavers like it or not.

5 comments

  1. Good post, Mitch. I agree with you. The only piece that puzzles me is why they created a separate app and didn’t just incorporate these features into their existing Facebook app. It seems like making people download and install another app adds an unnecessary obstacle.

  2. Now, I am just waiting for the day I can go to Costco or Target, pick up a nice Panasonic or Canon camera with the little blue “f” on the front and know that if I take a decent picture with my decent camera, I can send it to Facebook straightaway through my phone’s Bluetooth.
    Camera sounds like a decent app for snapshots, but photography has been seriously dumbed down over the past several years.
    Give us BOTH Facebook!

  3. The only problem with “Camera” is that is too late. The fact that it is free is a slap in the face(book) to those who have already paid money to integrate photo apps with Facebook (eg: Picasa Web Albums) or one of the many point/shoot/filter iPhone & Droid photo apps in the market. There are many photo or mobile apps that can already do what Camera does. This really is a billion dollar elephant in the room.

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