Facebook develops a video chat application called Slingshot

On May 19, according to the Financial Times website, people familiar with the matter said Facebook has been developing a video chat application internally called Slingshot for months, with a simple user interface and fast response time.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been "personally supervising the war" since the late acquisition of "after-hours-to-be-burned" video for $ 3 billion (about RMB18.5 billion) at the end of last year after the failure of the photo-sharing service Snapchat. This secret project.

Slingshot users can send short video messages with just two clicks of the display. One source said Slingshot may be released this month, but warned at the same time Facebook may still abandon the project.

As part of Zuckerberg's Facebook strategy to create a number of independent mobile services, Slingshot may be independent of Facebook Messenger.

Facebook's first attempt to directly challenge Snapchat was released in December 2012 as a Poke, but it was not favored by users. Facebook this month to Poke off the App Store.

In February, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, a messaging application, valued at more than $ 14.6 billion in cash and stock at Friday's closing price, with more than 500 million WhatsApp users. Analysts see the rapid rise of messaging applications such as WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk as the biggest competitive threat Facebook faces, said Geoff Blaber, an analyst at CCS Insight, a market research firm. "Snapchat recognizes in Facebook Too successful a very successful young user base, through their own development or acquisition continue to introduce new services, to maintain user engagement is very important. "

Snapchat this month upgraded its app to include text messaging and video calling.

Slingshot has taken a different strategy. It is learned that, Slingshot and Wit Dot Media released last month TapTalk similar to the user click on the contact file photos to send photos or short video to each other, the other can only see the photos received once or short video.

Bramber said Slingshot may not yet be a competitor to Snapchat. "Even if it's late for the market and trying to compete with a huge user base, even companies like Facebook have a hard time catching up with competitors." (bamboo)