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  • Slingshot is Facebook's New Video Messaging App
Technology Articles > Cell Phones > Others > Slingshot is Facebook's New Video Messaging App

Facebook’s newest app will be called Slingshot (internally, at least), and it was developed to rival Snapchat. Apparently, a video messaging app is what Facebook needs the most now. Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat last November, but the social networking company was turned down by the startup.

So, Facebook has decided to build its own version of Snapchat instead – if you can’t acquire it, built it, right?

How Slingshot Will Work

Like all of Facebook’s other apps (including Facebook Messenger now), Slingshot will be completely separate from the Facebook app and site. Slingshot may also include text messages (as Snapchat does), but those details haven’t been worked out quite yet. It’s also a possibility that Facebook higher-ups may get rid of the app altogether (and you may never see it), but it looks like Facebook is trying anything to reach out to the rest of the world that doesn’t actually use Facebook (and that number keeps getting higher).

Facebook has recently purchased Instagram, and the company has also purchased WhatsApp. Both of these purchases were made to help Facebook reach other parts of the world, since many people outside of North America have very little to do with social networks, but still use messenger apps. Now, Facebook is going to have to prove to the world that its new video messenger service is better than what Slingshot is offer, and that might not be as hard as you think.

Snapchat Gets Reprimanded

Snapchat promises users that messages will disappear forever after a few minutes (that’s the startups main hook), but the US Federal Trade Commission has just cracked down on the company stating that messages may not disappear forever. The fact is that third-party users can keep chats using other methods, and, thus, chats do not disappear forever. Snapchat hasn’t tried to fix this problem (and I’m not sure that it’s entirely possible to do so), and that means that users may have lost some faith in the service. Can Facebook create a messenger system that truly gets rid of messages for good?

To some, Snapchat isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway, so Facebook may have an automatic and simple in where that’s concerned. Then again, people tend to be wary of anything that Facebook owns, and there might be good reason for that kind of paranoia. It seems that Facebook likes to collect information about its users as much as possible, and that includes acquiring messenger services like WhatsApp, Instagram, and now the new video messenger service that is Slingshot.

Is it completely paranoid to think that Facebook may just be putting our rumors of Slingshot to make Snapchat cave under pressure? It’s possible that the Snapchat crew might just sell out to Facebook to make life simpler. If you use any of Facebook’s services, what do you think of a new service that could act just like Snapchat? Is this a good or a bad thing? Do you trust Facebook to not gather up your personal details?