Photo sharing is definitely one of the biggest, hottest trends on the planet right now. At the heart of it is Snapchat, but Facebook put that dominance squarely in their sites when they recently unveiled their new photo sharing app, Slingshot.
In an announcement that the Slingshot team posted on their website recently, they said that “Photos and videos that don’t stick around forever allow for sharing that’s more expressive, raw and spontaneous.”
The difference between Slingshot and Snapchat is that Slingshot is aimed at “group sharing”. One of their taglines is that you can take a picture and then “sling it to a bunch of friends.”
Another, even bigger difference, is that the people you send your picture to using the Slingshot app won’t be able to see it until they Sling something back to you, the original sender.
Should the person that receives a Slingshot photo or video not exactly be impressed by it, all they need to do is quickly swipe it away. They can also send back a worded reaction to the shot if they wish to.
Surprisingly, the team over at Slingshot even included a reference to their biggest competitor when making their recent announcement. “We’ve enjoyed using Snapchat to send each other ephemeral messages and expect there to be a variety of apps that explore this new way of sharing,” they posted. “With Slingshot, we saw an opportunity to create something new and different: a space where you can share everyday moments with lots of people at once.”
All iPhones that run IOS 7, as well as all Android smartphones that are using either Jelly Bean or KitKat can now download Slingshot and begin using it to share their spur of the moment pics and videos with their friends and contacts.
By the way, for anyone that has a memory that extends beyond the last five minutes, Facebook first attempted to copy Snapchat a while back with something called Poke. Remember Poke? No, you probably don’t.
Slingshot looks to be much better and hopefully, just like Snapchat, will become a mega hit among users. The fact that it lets them add drawings and text to photos and videos before sending them back is an obvious plus.
One other feature that new users might like is the “React button”. This will let them send an instant snapshot back to their friend with a reaction to their latest picture or video.
Isn’t this an absolutely incredible age that we live in?
