After its accidental rollout and subsequent removal from the App Store last week, Facebook's latest standalone app, Slingshot, has officially launched.
The app, the company's latest (and likely last) effort to create a true Snapchat competitor, allows users to send disappearing photo and video messages. But Facebook isn't framing Slingshot as a messaging app; rather, those who have been working on the app say it's more a way of sharing what you're up to at any given moment — a visual status update, if you will.
But while Facebook has clearly tried to differentiate Slingshot's ephemeral messages from Snapchat's, the app manages to both feel both more polished and more desperate. Here's a look at how the two disappearing messengers compare.
Getting started: finding your friends
Unlike Facebook's other standalone apps, Slingshot does not solely rely on your Facebook friends list for contacts. Like Snapchat, accounts are tied to your phone number, which you must verify before you can start using the app. Once you have verified your account, you can search for friends from your contacts list, Facebook or look up individuals by user name.
However, even though Slingshot allows you to search for people you know, there isn't one central contacts menu where you can easily view all your connections.The only time you can see all of your contacts at once is after shooting a photo or video.
And, unlike Snapchat, there is no approval process for adding connections. Anyone can send messages to anyone whose information they have. Facebook says an approval process isn't necessary because users can simply choose to ignore the message they don't want to see. You can also elect to ignore all messages from individual users by hiding them (you can always unhide people in the app's settings).
Launching Slingshot immediately takes you to the app's camera. The selfie button toggles between the device's front and rear-facing cameras, and holding down the shutter button allows you to record a video. Although Slingshot's overall camera quality seems to be better than Snapchat's, the app doesn't allow you to zoom.
As with Snapchat, you can add drawings and text to the photos and videos you send. But with Slingshot, both features feel far more elegant and give you much more control.
Text is limited to 140 characters, but can be repositioned on the image. Unlike Snapchat's text, which always remains the same size, Slingshot's text will get bigger when you drag it down from the top of the screen.
The drawing tool is also far more advanced than Snapchat's — you can adjust both the color and the size of the brush. Dragging along the color bar selects a color, dragging left or right changes the brush size, moving the tool right makes the brush smaller and moving it left makes it larger.
'Shot for shot' messages
Should you receive a new message, you'll see a notification telling you how many locked messages are waiting. If you swipe down, you can see who the message is from, along with a small pixelated thumbnail of the image that gives you a hint of what the photo is without actually revealing anything.
Each new message arrives with the sender's name displayed at the top. Messages sent only to one recipient will say "just for you" along with the sender's name, while those sent to multiple recipients will only show the sender's name.
One noteworthy aspect of the app is that it won't let you see new messages until you send one of your own back to the sender. Facebook says the reason behind this is to take the pressure off users to constantly read and send messages. But, in reality, the feature has the opposite effect — by forcing people to send responses to messages they haven't yet seen, Facebook is essentially holding your messages hostage in the hopes of increasing engagement.
The app's React option is the one exception to the 'shot-for-shot' rule. You can respond to any message with a reaction by tapping on the image, which brings the camera into the lower half of the screen. Using this option means the recipient will not be forced to send their own message in order to view a reaction.
So which is better?
In general, Slingshot isn't singularly focused on making things disappear. You can enable automatic saving of the photos you take in the app's settings and there are other small touches aimed at helping you preserve your photos — if you take a photo and close the app without sending it, for example, the photo will be there waiting for you the next time you launch the app.
And unlike Snapchat, there is no time limit on Slingshot's ephemeral messages, once you've managed to unlock them. The photos will remain onscreen as long as you like, but will disappear forever the moment you navigate away from the screen. And, if you take a screenshot in Slingshot, the sender will not be notified.
Even though Snapchat made strides toward improving its design in its
most recent update, Slingshot's overall design feels much more polished and elegant than Snapchat's. While Snapchat can be slow and often stutters while loading and sending messages, Slingshot is fast and responsive.
The six months of development Facebook put into the app really shows, but maybe that's the problem. One of the reasons Snapchat has been so successful is because the app focused more on sharing and less on bells and whistles.
In the end, although Facebook isn't presenting Slingshot as a messaging app, by forcing its users to send replies to messages they haven't even sent yet, the app just feels like a gimmick designed to force user engagement.
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