Facebook Wants To Launch Its Own Camera

Facebook is reportedly looking to develop its own camera service in order to get its users to take and share more photo and video content.

The social media giant, which also owns photo-editing and sharing site Instagram, is creating a standalone camera app which would allow users to upload content straight to the site in one easy step.

This would offer the option of opening into a camera function to take photos, or to stream video via the newly-announced Facebook Live feature, according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal.

Say cheese

The reports don’t mention a target release date for the service yet, but the news would be the latest step by Facebook to launch and promote a wider range of standalone apps.

The company’s recent F8 conference was dominated by the launch of new services and tools to make it easier than ever before for developers to create apps for the site.

This includes new APIs for Facebook Messenger that will let developers build bots that can be used for automated responses, customer service or to order goods and services, while a new Account Kit lets people log in with a phone number or email address.

Updated Java, Python and PHP SDKs will be offered for advertisers and an upgrade tool will show what version of an API an app is using and how it would have behaved differently with an alternative version.

Facebook is also updating its analytics tools to provide “deeper” audience insights, an improved app dashboard and a rate limiting tool that lets developers see when a particular app is calling an API too much and could be throttled.

These announcements followed a period of refocusing for Facebook, which in December shut down its Creative Labs development division, leading to the closure of several apps including Slingshot, Riffs, and Rooms.

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