Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Facebook Updates Camera App, Talks Mobile Strategy

Facebook has expelled its initial poignant refurbish to Facebook Camera, the amicable network's standalone photo-sharing app. The 1.1 chronicle of Facebook Camera responds to a of the greatest user final given the app's launch in late May: manuscript support. Now users can emanate and amend Facebook albums from inside of the Camera app. The refurbish adds a few other new features, inclusive a News add-on for photo-related notifications, the capability to "Like" comments, and on the whole bug fixes.

When you upload photos in the Facebook Camera 1.1, a new Albums symbol appears. Tap that and you'll be able to choose an existing print manuscript or emanate a new a for your post. By default, your photos will go to your "Mobile Uploads" album, that has been the box given Facebook Camera launched. But that's been a complaint for users, who gave chronicle 1.0 a squalid 2.5-star rating on the App Store, often dinging it is to insufficient of manuscript support. This refurbish suggests that Facebook has been profitable attention.

"We wish people to discuss it stories in littler clumps," mentioned Scott Raymond, an operative on the Facebook Camera group and a co-founder of location-based amicable network Gowalla, that Facebook acquired in 2011. "It's more innate and it's more matched for mobile. But Albums has been segment of the Facebook Photos product for years and users admire them and there's lots of current use cases for it. The Album [support] illustrates that we're all the time listening to user feedback."

Just last week, Facebook

"The lessons that you schooled here are in the Facebook app now," Raymond said. "That's other engaging thing about this type of draw close you have of multi-part mobile apps. We are all the time learning from a other and reckoning out what functions and relocating it from stage to platform."

One without doubt subject is how ample Instagram, Facebook's new and many costly merger ,factors in to all of this. The answer, according to Raymond, is not really much."The Instagram deal hasn't obviously closed yet," he said. "So there hasn't been any great deal of review between the two teams yet."

But if the principal Facebook app incorporates features created for Facebook Camera app, what is the worth in having so many standalone offerings?Raymond says that it has to do with the product experience together with the way particular app teams function. A standalone app has a comparatively tiny group that stays focused on office building a really definite experience together with it can. Instead of perplexing to fill up more and more features in to a singular app - similar to with the principal Facebook app - engineers on the Messenger or Camera teams can cavalcade down to what functions most appropriate for a given task. The standalones deed as incubators for features that, if successful, may find their way in to the principal app.

"We can erect the most appropriate print experience you can on mobile," Raymond said."And when you learn patterns or techniques that work really well, they may be ported back in to the principal iOS app or in some cases even cross-platform. The broad app tries to do all of these things together with it can. But infrequently it's good to have a really focused experience."

For example, if you wish to know about your ultimate Facebook photo-related news, Camera should be your go-to source, rsther than than the full Facebook app. The News add-on boundary notifications to when somebody has commented or "liked" a of your photos, or if you've been tagged in an image. You do not have to attend to all of your other Facebook activity.

Another advantage to Facebook's standalone app teams is that any functions sincerely independently, as mini-startups inside of a incomparable company. Raymond initial assimilated Facebook in January 2012 after the firm acquired Gowalla , where he was CTO. Gowalla outlayed years focused on mobile sharing, that done the pierce natural. But according to Raymond, the fact that he got to work on a really tiny group true out of Facebook foot stay unquestionably helped.

"It was flattering cold to only be able to block in to a group that felt similar to home," Raymond said. "For the initial 5 or 6 months I was at the company, I didn't even lay at my own desk. That all conspired to make it feel similar to a really startup-y experience. I went from a tiny room of people who are all hacking a brand new plan true to other one."

With the

"It's a regular balancing act," Raymond said. "We are getting improved and improved at developing mobile practice in the context of the stage that they are on and moreover borrowing inside of the company."

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