Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Slingshot – A new way to share photos and videos

sling.me

142 pointsjeremylevy152 comments

We live in the age of wonders. The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact. And at Facebook, a company which can, if it chooses, pick from among the brightest engineering minds and focus their efforts on any problem it chooses, the power to concentrate years of programming knowledge on the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced:

"A new way to share photos and videos"

And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

I'm happy to see someone who shares my exact same sentiment. I mean, when I read "but there's a catch, they have to send something first" I thought it was a joke. First of all, the fact that they made another snapchat with just a little spin on it says to me that they don't really know what they're doing; they're just after money, there's no vision behind it. Secondly, with all the useful products and services they could be developing for the betterment of society, they decided it would be a good idea to sink money in yet another pics sharing app. I fear the future will be just this: a selected few engineers making toys for the entertainment of the masses living on minimum wage. Bleak times indeed.

I think it's more indicative of the way applications are being used these days.

Create a gimmick -> gain incredible popularity -> try to monetize your product -> users switch to the next gimmick -> create a new gimmick.

Which does rather imply there's a big crash coming.

That's not a zero-sum nor value-creating cycle: everyone will slowly haemorrhage users, at the risk that the next "thing" isn't something that easily centralizes to a corporation - i.e. a generation of school kids who get big into some type of mesh-networked thing which solely goes device to device.

It would only have to be created once.

If it's created as a platform (hear, a protocol) it may effectively need to be created only once. The whole online world is unknowingly waiting for it, and I feel it coming our way like, at raging speed.

I'm with you to a point, but this objection is a close relative of the "we can put a man on the moon, but we can't ______?" argument.

There are other companies, not focused from the beginning on advancing social connection in the Internet age, that are spending billions of dollars and millions of man-hours on improving the world in other ways.

> improving the world in other ways

Are you implying that Slingshot has improved the world?

nope

> And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

Not yet, but mature messaging services seem to have reasonable monetization that isn't primarily display-ad-based. I understand "stickers" to be one of the main ones.

Like others that have responded to this, I agree with you on principle. However, this kind of "innovation" is what they need to serve the simplistic minds that form the core user base of Facebook. New ways to share photos and videos are exactly what the kinds of people that use Facebook want from Facebook - nothing more, nothing less. Quite simply, Zuckerberg knows his audience.

Remember, these are people that vote for President of the United States based upon what their favorite rapper says about the candidates in 140 characters on Twitter. In that context, a new sharing app is revolutionary.

Did you know there are over 150 varieties of Finches? Each slightly different, maybe color difference or a larger beak or bigger wingspan. They came about by iterating on the Finches that came before.

In fact, that's how most advancements come about in nature, poetry, art, and yes, even technology. We take what came before an iterate on it.

I'm trying to think of a giant leap that came out of nowhere, but I can't.

Photos and videos are important to me. Really important. It's how I see my family 1000's of miles away or my daughter 5 miles away when I'm at work.

And just like in nature, either this iteration will thrive or die out eventually.

I like this analogy. Silicon valley generates random mutations of existing ideas, without thought or direction, and occasionally lands, by pure chance, on something slightly better, which survives at the expense of other inferior mutations.

I guess that maybe the developers working on "a new way to share photos and video" kid themselves that they're making something different; something that really is revolutionary. But no, what they're really doing is tweaking the shape of a beak thinking it'll make a better finch.

So I do kind of have to ask: is making random tweaks to the genome of the photo sharing application in the hope they'll be successful really the best use of the talents of all those developers?

I think this is basically what scott adams pivot article said.

> So I do kind of have to ask: is making random tweaks to the genome of the photo sharing application in the hope they'll be successful really the best use of the talents of all those developers?

These developers CHOOSE to work at Facebook. If they don't feel as though re-inventing the slide show would be the best use of their time, there are thousands of companies which do cooler stuff that would GLADLY have them.

Maybe the people who work for Facebook aren't as smart as you think they are. Actually, what's far more likely is that MAYBE JUST MAYBE not every one of the tens of thousands of people working at Facebook is a genius...

Tens of thousands?

6,800 as of March according to their 10-Q.

As of March Facebook has a reported 6,818 total full time employees. Certainly Thousands, but not tens of thousands.

> Silicon valley generates random mutations of existing ideas, without thought or direction, and occasionally lands, by pure chance, on something slightly better.

I would say that people do this. Silicon Valley does not do this "without thought or direction," but instead with great forethought and direction in the form of a "business plan."

The problem I see with this, is that this is not some earnest effort to improve photo sharing, but an obvious attempt to clone an existing and popular service with the hope of mining its popularity.

Truly the developers of this cannot think they created "a new way to share photos and video," unless they are ill. All they have done is applied a modest novelty to an existing concept. Not quite a "mutation" in the sense of a new species of Finch, but more in the vein of a parasite.

Penicillin.

I think that was more of a discovery than an invention

Marvellous. I'm going to start flipping random bits in memory. In a few million years I might have an interesting piece of software.

I think there are probably more efficient ways you can get to making an interesting piece of software. Building on the work of others, maybe?

> I'm trying to think of a giant leap that came out of nowhere, but I can't.

This isn't exactly a Manhattan Project or golden-age Bell Labs kind of deal. Some iterations are a bit more ambitious than others.

Unlike evolution, engineers can be goal directed. We can do better than Yet Another Finch that is Slightly More Yellow.

Nature is brutal and peoples' complaints over the app are a muted form of natural selection.

Also, did ed209 honestly claim artists churn out iterations of what came before, just like facebook churning out cloneware?

Sure. "Good artists borrow, great artists steal."

> complaints over the app are a muted form of natural selection.

that's not true. we uninstall and don't use the app. Remember Facebook •Camera? That has exited the gene pool.

> Also, did ed209 honestly claim artists churn out iterations of what came before, just like facebook churning out cloneware?

Yes. Just search for art movements, whether from 14th century Renaissance to 1950's pop art. Tell me artists were not "influenced" by other art being produced at the time.

>that's not true. we uninstall and don't use the app. Remember Facebook •Camera? That has exited the gene pool.

We also voice our opinions publicly, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most app stores have a review section specifically for this purpose, but one shouldn't let that limit their forums for speech.

>Yes. Just search for art movements, whether from 14th century Renaissance to 1950's pop art. Tell me artists were not "influenced" by other art being produced at the time.

Even the great artists who steal all the best stuff end up creating something new and never seen before.

The monetization strategy is to pump ads in to it.

So don't work for Facebook. Build something that matters, or work for someone who is. Simple as that.

You don't think they're building things that matter? have you seen their app install ad network?

People want to spend lots of time sharing photos of themselves and cats. Blame humans not Facebook.

Exactly. The parent of your comment says "The internet and mobile devices create endless possibilities for people to communicate, learn and interact."

How are people going to communicate and interact? Probably by sending text, images, and videos to each other...I'd love to hear some proposals for alternatives but I'm kind of tired of the "cat photo sharing" pejorative, because that's what people want, that's how they connect with each other, and if you can actually come up with a better idea you'll be very wealthy.

Sharing photos and videos is an activity that brings meaning to billions of lives, and it's not unreasonable to try to improve upon it.

Facebook is a large company with a number of revenue streams. Every single feature they undertake does not need to individually earn its keep. (And I'm not sure why that aspect would concern you in any case.)

>Sharing photos and videos is an activity that brings meaning to billions of lives, and it's not unreasonable to try to improve upon it.

On the other hand, the "meaning" that people derive from sharing can be defined in some basic terms (e.g. interaction, connection, etc.). At what point does the incremental "improvement" in sharing mechanics no longer justify the resources required to produce that improvement? First, we share it. Then, we share it and it disappears. Next, we can't see what's shared until we share something back. Is this really improving on the basic "meaning"?

Sure, Facebook gets to decide how their resources are applied. But, I don't think we should pretend that there's some great and noble effort to bring still more meaning to billions of lives. Facebook wants a novel way to keep you on Facebook where you can bring more meaning to their bottom line. Period.

And, you know what else has meaning? Talking to people. Having lunch with people. Seeing people; not watching their latest "broadcast", but actually seeing them.

I'm just over it, and I'm guessing others are as well. There's just this constant, vapid, soul-sucking effort to endlessly distract people with some novel piece of nothingness as a means of generating still more revenue.

Gets a little old.

It's these comments that get a little old. Yes, obviously Facebook wants to make more money, and they do that by selling your information to advertisers. Thanks for the reminder. At the same time, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Facebook has enriched the lives of millions of people. I know it has allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends who I otherwise would probably speak to more rarely. That's meaningful to me.

I'm also tired of the "why don't you go out and have a REAL conversation" comments. I would love to have lunch with the friends I keep in touch with primarily on Facebook. Unfortunately, they live halfway across the country, so it's not that easy.

Just because the interactions happen online doesn't mean they're not real or meaningful. The fact that your comment on an online forum suggests otherwise is particularly rich.

Honestly, it's these predictable replies that are even older.

>Facebook has enriched the lives of millions of people

Right. So, not saying Facebook has no utility. Yes, we know it serves a purpose for a lot of people. Clearly.

>it has allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends who I otherwise would probably speak to more rarely.

Yes, we also know that's the number one use case, which serves as Facebook's crowning contribution to humanity. I won't argue what it means to you or anyone else personally. I do think it replaces more meaningful interaction with a relatively superficial pub/sub model. I also believe that it isolates people and I am aware of studies which have indicated the same. That you and others find some value in it doesn't make it a net positive for society, or even for you for that matter. But, that's really not my argument anyway.

>they live halfway across the country, so it's not that easy.

Well, you could call them and invest some one-on-one time if they were meaningful relationships but, in any case, I am referring more to the overall tendancy of people to marginalize an increasing number of relationships (even local) to a pub/sub tool like Facebook. But, really, I am objecting more to this never-ending devaluing of relationships by Facebook whose motive is to capture your social activity (relationships) by any means necessary, irrespective of the actual value-add (or subtract) to those relationships.

Of course we all know that their purpose is to make money. I wasn't dropping that as a great revelation. My point is that it should and does matter that we give so much of our relationships over to a company whose interests may run orthogonal to the preservation of value in those relationships.

>The fact that your comment on an online forum suggests otherwise is particularly rich.

It's really not. You just missed the point.

I suppose this can depend on the context of the users. Personally, I've gone through the beginnings of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat (the last of which I've uninstalled and never use). Having more than a decade of various types of social networking, I've "grown up" on what amounts to a more wordy, involved kind of interpersonal communication.

The generation of people who are just turning 18, though, have grown up with more immediate forms of social networking. Snapchat, Secret, etc reign supreme in younger demographics.

An interesting parallel is the concept of a meme. For people who were around for the growth of the meme, they're stories or actions. For younger folk, they're image macros.

It's you. You are the monetization strategy.

> And they don't even seem to have a monetization strategy for it.

They'll collect the location information, your circle of friends, etc. and enrich your profile (what they know about you). That helps them monetize better.

FB is an ad network, basically (or will become one). They have data on ~1B users, and the value of this data goes up with the amount of interaction there is between users.

Outside of Search, ads monetize pretty badly (what are Display ad CPMs now.. $0.50? ). That's because of extremely low engagement. The more data FB has about you, the more engaging ad it can pick for you; and thus they can charge a lot more.

So this product by itself doesn't have to monetize at all, as long as the net effect of this product is higher value for FB.

while I have to agree, still, it has a psychological experiment side which is quite interesting. You don't see the picture, you have to be active to reveal it. Will this pull you into being active?

So, it might as well be the virus being tested, not the photo-sharing-app that is infected.

This is more about about promoting sharing as a cultural behavior than making money on this particular product. By incentivizing sharing, companies end up with more personal information. It forces lurkers to participate (some might argue that's a good thing).

The service forces you to pay for content with your own content, whereas before the payment was implicit, or at least invisible -- as long as you were in the store, you consented to being monitored.

> It forces lurkers to participate

This line of iambic pentameter is the first one that gets to the point of the OP.

Yes. As it turns out, people really like other people.

>the capabilities afforded to us by this astonishing bounty of personal technology has produced: "A new way to share photos and videos"

Where's the double upvote link?

And, it's not just the waste of resources/developer talent. It's also the complete dumbing down of everyone consuming this stuff. If this "succeeds", then we now have yet another novel way to waste our precious time replacing real relationships with superficial interactions, and otherwise doing very little of actual consequence.

We are iterating on superficiality, distraction, and nothingness. I suppose one fine day, we'll perfect it.

cynical piece of shit. you don't understand how innovation works. the world is full of people like you and it is quite sad. more sad to see this as the top comment on hn

"We live in the age of wonders" is that so ?

This app brings to mind an excerpt for Larry Page - The untold Story:

... Up front, an executive pitched a new product that helped users find the right offline store to do their shopping.

The executive was well into his pitch when, suddenly, Page interrupted him.

“No,” Page said emphatically. “We don’t do this.”

The room grew quiet.

“We build products that leverage technology to solve huge problems for hundreds of millions of people.”

He went on. “Look at Android. Look at Gmail. Look at Google Maps. Look at Google Search. That’s what we do. We build products you can’t live without.”

“This is not it.”

But, don't you think the "No, we don't do this, we build products that ...." for Zuckerberg ends with "allow hundreds of millions of people to share photos and videos". Or something like that.

Feels like there are many ways to share a photo/video and Facebook wants to make an app for each kind of way.

Also called the "toothbrush rule". Larry wouldn't allow a product that you didn't use twice a day to be developed at Google.

I've never heard this before. I like this a lot.

Kinda like the Bezos "pizza rule".

...because it has the word "rule" in it? That's about the only similarity between those two concepts.

But Slingshot might well qualify under the toothbrush rule. Never underestimate the bounds of people's vanity.

"a new product that helped users find the right offline store to do their shopping"

I'd love an app that did that. I'd love inventory search for brick-and-mortar stores. I'd love an app that let me know where a product is located in a store.

In fact, Google Maps on my phone does part of this with it's "Explore nearby" feature, which I've used more than once. Maybe the time just wasn't right for Larry Page to accept it back then.

http://redlaser.com/

http://milo.com/

Thanks for the recommendations. I actually use RedLaser and forgot Milo was still around after they were purchased by eBay. Too bad Milo doesn't seem to have an app.

This is a typical example of survivor bias. You are overly emphasizing successful people's view as generalized truth. The fact is, these are the same leaders who also missed out boat on entire social revolution. They are not often not right but it hurts them lot less because they have already amassed huge momentum.

For hackers, makers, creators, hobbyists - I don't think you should put any artificial restrictions on what you should work on. If you think it's the most interesting thing you could be doing right now, may be its useful to you and may-may-be to your friends - go do it. Don't think about if it has good monetization or if it would be used X times a day or it would put you in the TechCrunch etc.

I wholehearted agree with you, "I don't think you should put any artificial restrictions on what you should work on"

I'm just disappointed with Facebook. They have so much resources and the ability to make such a difference but they chose to make this crap.

I'm not sure I understand the allure of this; perhaps I'm missing something. So I have to send a video/photo in response to someone who sent me one, in order to see what they sent? It seems like there would be a massive disparity in interesting activities between two parties at any given time to make this concept work. If one of my buddies is having a riot at Coachella and sends me a crazy festival pic for instance, and I'm just sitting at my desk doing work, what am I supposed to do? Send them back a pic of my coffee mug or something? Seems like they felt they had to do something to distinguish themselves from Snapchat but I'm not sure this is the answer. Time till tell though, I guess.

> Send them back a pic of my coffee mug or something?

I love getting job pictures on Snapchat so I'm not so sure it will always be a case where something is more interesting than the other.

There's a huge untapped market for sharing passive-aggressiveness on social media.

Well for one, you wouldn't know what his pic was. And two, that's going to be very very normal in this app.

I like it because it's a pic conversation app (which i enjoy, with close friends) that forces interaction. For those of us already using similar things, this sort of structures our interaction into a conversation, rather than one person simply sending pics to the other.

With that said, i can't help but feel i am the minority of users. Not just here on HN (lets be honest, most things are received poorly on HN), but all around. People have the sense of needing to send something meaningful in a picture, but i like simply idle chat, in picture form. It's neat

Why the hell would sending dud pictures to see a picture someone sent you be "normal" for the app? Couldn't we use Facebook, Snapchat, or SMS to get the same effect without literally working around a feature? Fucking retarded.

Why would you want to use an app that "forces" interaction? Either the two mutual parties are interested in talking to each other, or they are not. Im sorry, but a photo sharing app like this one will not help my conversations be more engaging. It actually puts up barriers.

"Neat" does not justify the money or engineering talent invested in it. If I was a Facebook share holder, I'd be confused as all hell.

I'd say Snapchat is the comparison, and yes, you literally could. It's almost as if people and companies create products to compete with other products. Multiple types of bread, what madness is this. I could literally use the same type of bread from this other company!

> "Neat" does not justify the money or engineering talent invested in it. If I was a Facebook share holder, I'd be confused as all hell.

lol i wasn't trying to justify them creating it. I don't give a shit why they did. All i care is that i am a consumer of it, and enjoy it more than Snapchat. Vastly more than sending pictures via SMS/Facebook/etc.

I'd love to continue a discussion, but this feels much less like a discussion about a product and more like i have to try and sell you on the concept, and on the product itself. Frankly, i don't have the slightest care if you like the product.

Funny how Liking something on HN is so often a mind blowingly crazy concept. "But the numbers don't add up!!" they cry. Well, make your own Facebook, become far more successful than FB, and don't make their mistakes. Since you so clearly know something they don't, you should have a serious edge in the competition, right? :)

So I won't knock on you enjoying it, because thats subjective. How do you use it though, you'll need to eventually sell all your facebook friends to use it as well since you like it so much. You'll have to convince them why forcing to send you a picture to see what you send them is better for them.

For this reason, I see it literally as an uphill battle for it to gain traction. Hoping that you are right, and that Facebook as learned something from their mistakes and will take their edge and use it - instead of building a completely separate app with a disjointed use case and calling it social innovation. Give me a break!

> How do you use it though, you'll need to eventually sell all your facebook friends to use it as well since you like it so much. You'll have to convince them why forcing to send you a picture to see what you send them is better for them.

I disagree on me personally, but that is because i try to keep my social circle, especially those who i'd use this app with, very small. I try to keep my FB friends below 10 (though, i have been debating letting everyone in, but only listening/posting to ~10).

This is abnormal for the common person today.

Fwiw, the only problem i have with this App, is that it destroys natural image conversation. Now that we've (friend s and i) used it heavily for a day (we'll see if i think the same after a week), we still enjoy it but we cannot converse beyond 1 reaction. This feels quite limited, and makes the "idle-chat" style picture convo less supported.

My first thought was: "this is for sexting".

The reason why the tag line is not "You show me yours I show you mine" escapes me.

It sounds like "fun" to me. I think that's something that Snapchat was able to capture very well, and it looks like Slingshot is looking to actually improve on. It's just plain fun to see what your friends are all up to, at least to me. It leads to discussions and other communication (texting "Wish we had some coffee here, it would probably mellow out this Coachella riot" for instance).

As was mentioned earlier, it's a "show yours and I'll show you mine" kind of thing, but not in the stereotypical sexual sense. It feels like it has the potential to foster community, admittedly in a somewhat odd way, by coercing people to share experiences.

I do worry about the dilution of content through the "Send to all" feature, but I think that requiring someone to send something back directly to you alleviates that quite a bit.

The catch is a pretty big deal, and by deal I mean a deal breaker for me.

Why do I have to share something back with someone in order to see what they've shared back at me? I understand it's great for engagement but who would use this over Snapchat or Instagram.

I had the same question. That doesn't even remotely mirror how an actual conversation works.

It mirrors how a flamewar works.

The concept kind of reminds me of Facebook poke wars, which are mildly entertaining in and of itself.

I didn't realize it when watching the promo video but you're actually spot on.

It's not really sharing though. It's teasing or playing, much more like Snapchat. You wouldn't use this to share things. It would be too annoying.

It's called "pic for pic" and I hear the kids are really into it.

Its definitely because they are taking naked pictures of themselves.

It's a game, or at least, it's playful.

I like the idea. It could shake up the whole lurker pool of users or fail miserably. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a community of users that are 100% engaged?

If you don't have the attention span to sit through the montage, here's the money shot: http://blog.sling.me (third paragraph down):

> To get started on Slingshot, shoot a photo or video. It can be what you’re up to, who you’re with or a quick selfie. Add some text and color, then sling it to a bunch of friends. Here’s the deal: friends won’t be able to see your shot until they sling something back to you. They can then reply with a reaction—or simply swipe your shot away.

Thanks, I'd no idea what that was till I read what you referenced.

This underscores what appears to be an interesting strategic move by Facebook: build an ecosystem of applications, which in turn encourages people to use their other products. In turn, this provides continued competition against Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

The interesting thing about this app is that it's an experiment: viral success of social applications appears to be a hit or miss sort of thing, so why not throw many things at the wall and see what sticks á la Paper, Home, Messenger, or buy something already big á la Instagram or Snapchat.

One benefit of this strategy is that it raises barriers to entry for your competitors: the more modes of social interaction you offer, the fewer opportunities for your competitors to chip away at your empire, and the more enticing your properties become to advertisers.

The "barrier to entry" argument would be true if Slingshot was first. Slingshot was created as an attack on Snapchat.

And that's after Facebook's previous attempt to attack Snapchat, Poke, failed miserably.

I think there is a good reason for these failure. Personally I haven't installed any of these apps, deliberately because Facebook is behind them. I don't trust Facebook, period. They fall into the same box as Microsoft called "Do not trust. Do not re-open".

For me, Facebook's historical lax attitude to users' privacy has put them permanently in my personal dog house.

Mark Zuckerberg's mum should have introduced him to Aesop's Fables. These would have been the ones that Mark should have heeded:

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheDogandtheHa...

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheEagleandthe...

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheHorseHunter...

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&MercuryandtheW...

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheShepherdsBo...

- http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheWolfinSheep...

"build an ecosystem of applications,"

Google tried this in the mid-oughts. They stopped and began focusing mostly on Android, Search/Ads and YouTube. They rolled all that random idea/app shit into Google X. Apparently, Steve Jobs and the Google founders sat down and he basically said focus or die. So Google focused. I'm sure there's a Google graveyard out there that highlights all the apps they attempted to make, a few are still kicking like finance and news. But like Reader is huge shutdown from that period.

FB will likely do the same thing while it finds it's voice.

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects

For the uninitiated.

From my point of view, Google still is an ecosystem of applications: Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Blogger, Google+, etc.

In fact, if you want a complete list, just get a "Google Apps for Business" account ($50/user/year) and start browsing the Admin pages.

I am guessing this is something kids will use to share nude pics... wish I was a kid now...

I'll show you mine...if you show me yours first?

and then send me a blank picture so you can see the one I sent for you. This way, a picture exchange requires at least 3 pictures. Seems like a win for usability to me. /s

The only concept stranger than being encouraged to send a photo of such little value that it disappears, is being asked to respond to something you can't see.

HackerNews guys & gals are probably not the audience of the app, but the audience Facebook's aiming at will love it.

Perhaps... but let's not forget about the "Poke" app which was their first run at a Snapchat clone. Anything FB puts out isn't an instant success.

That may be the case. What I wonder is how many people really trust Facebook to delete something?

People don't care and nor should you.

One interesting thing I've noticed is facebook has been making a lot of new apps and widgets.

Messenger, Paper, Slingshot.

Seems to me that they are trying to increase engagement with the "new" factor. I think it's pretty smart.

Is there actually a significant user base for them though?

I know Messenger was pretty much forced onto users, but other than that I don't know anyone who uses Paper, nor do I think any of my friends will start using Slingshot - especially when there are well established alternatives such as Snapchat.

I'm doubtful many of them have even heard of these new apps, and this is coming from someone relatively young (20 y/o).

It's obvious this is just another Facebook experiment to see if it sticks. To criticize the idea head on is dumb, I'm sure the people who built it have their own skepticism as well. Probably easy to build and launch, so they did. Criticize their methods (like focusing on photo/video apps in general, or on mass experimentation), not the specifics of experiments themselves if you want to be taken seriously. The least productive use of time is sitting around arguing if you think an idea would work, if it's easy to test.

Aww, c'mon. You're trying to promote a playfulness here that isn't justifiable in the present situation. How many stupid things can Facebook release before people stop paying attention to anything that Facebook releases?

You're also arguing, it seems, that there's now a condition in the app marketplace where people building things have no real understanding of what will play in the marketplace, so developers shouldn't think too hard about whether or not an app idea is a good idea by any criteria, other than "Build it -- you never know what the plebes will go for."

That may be how things seem to those of us who weren't lucky enough to build a stupid app and get rich off it, but who's gonna write that business book for McGraw-Hill?

I'm arguing that the depth of consideration should be inversely proportional to the ease with which one can run a test. Certainly the people at Facebook had some intuition about if this new dynamic would be appealing to people. But the reality is the success of these types of apps are hard to predict based upon your own personal preferences, when you look at the way various apps split along demographic lines. This type of app is trivial for Facebook to build at this point, it's really just a matter of opportunity cost for them, so it seems likely they will continue to try various small tweaks to interaction models in order to find successes in this domain.

And like I said, you can criticize the idea that they should be building these types of things in the first place. But people saying that this particular incarnation will never work because they don't "get" it haven't been paying attention the last 5 years in the mobile space, and those who lament the fact that all this talent was put into this app are probably overestimating the effort for a company like Facebook to produce something like this at this point.

I see the "catch" as a never-ending chain, and the conversations will end quite awkwardly.

That's a good point. You can't say "ok, see you there" or finish your conversation in any normal way without the other person sending yet another picture. One person will always end up with an unseen picture.

I've downloaded the app (username: minimaxir) and it's somewhat of a usability nightmare, much like the recent Snapchat update. The camera buttons are nearly invisible if you're facing a bright light source. (such as your face, which is a rather common use case with this type of app.) Additionally, there is absolutely no button for the app options: I found them completely by accident by tapping my username.

This is minimalism gone too far.

I'm curious to know whether the slingshot team extensively "dogfooded" their application and found that the mandatory slingback requirement wasn't as bad as I'm expecting.

I imagine they did. Surely they wouldn't release an app without adequate market research/qa.

Still, I'm not convinced. I'll have to try it.

I'm not convinced either, but I'm not going to try it. My immediate thought was DOA.

Same here. Its like sharing, but you have to share to let people share. Seems fucking stupid. Sending a picture is essentially asking for a picture. I can't imagine enough use cases where I think "I'll definitely want to send them this picture if they send me one first" to make this app stick, outside of sending naked pictures of myself in exchange for another one - which I never do.

Outside of using the "must-share-to-care" rule as some sort of teasing or game mechanic, why would they literally create work to share? I simply don't get it.

I'm also more than likely not their target market.

Yes, you are clearly not their target market.

> why would they literally create work to share? I simply don't get it.

I don't think they did? You can send a pic as easy as ever. But there is "work" to receive it. If I want to see what a friend just sent me, I snap a pic of something and send it back.

I think this will easily have DAU numbers that most startups would kill for. Whether it'll be big enough to justify at Facebook, though, remains to be seen.

The only way I could see it working is if you could easily send an integrated experience to a user who does not have the app. This would need to be from the web, have access to the camera, or ultimately download and install the app in the background.

If the early adopters of Slingshot do not need to care about who uses slingshot, and its rather seamless for the receiver, I could see the install base spreading quickly. That will make things easier. Then again, its a trick.

I think what remains to be seen is what sort of interation this enables, which prudently I suppose I'd say its too early to tell.

Conservatively I'd say the numbers are against it.

Be careful if you're using headphones, scared me to death.

FaceBook Slingshot: where we incentivize you to share photos no matter what else you're doing, even if you're biking with a child strapped to the front and there's a glorious picture of your shadow on the ground. Nope, nope, there it is got it. Phew. (re: promo video)

The great unbundling continues.

I understand Facebook is worried about a new trend wiping them out, but I don't see how a defensive moat of look-alikes is going to save them. Other than Messenger, are any of Facebook's new apps gaining users? Or are they like Poke — destined to be retired.

Honestly, they should've bid a couple more billions for Snapchat. And what a mess! I have one username on Facebook, another on Instagram, third on Slingshot - with the same company. That's why Twitter is my identity. Google+ is a mess, too. Twitter is identity and people protect and advertise their identity. All these others are recyclables. Tomorrow this can shut down and nobody will care. I'm surprised Facebook hasn't learned this. You can't even mention a username - it often finds the wrong people in the mentions, not even people who are friends. With Twitter, identity is solid. Anyway, maybe I'm pissed off as I missed to capture my username, but this doesn't mean I'm wrong. :)

I don't like this. I'm a proponent of the "slow web" -- a philosophy that treasures real-life reciprocation over online engagement. It eschews the idea of endorphin-releasing actions with the sole purpose but draining cognitive reservoirs.

The idea of engaging in conversations with no point except "sharing" -- with reduced focus on meaningful dialogue and increased focus on the simplistic pleasure of "getting mail" -- I find this kinda repulsive.

Perhaps this is grandiose, but it strikes me as the lowest common denominator of human interaction.

Not looking forward to stuff like this...

EDIT: And yes, I concede that it's pretty ingenious...! But I still don't like it. It's too much of a psychological hack for my tastes

Just tried slingshot for a day and absolutely hate it. Never thought facebook is capable of fart apps. "... some genius decided to include a feature that requires you to message back to unlock slings that are sent to you. Really? What am I supposed to send them when I don't even know what their sling is about? This results in me sending an unlocker photo just to unlock an unlocker sling sent to me and the vicious cycle continues..."

What results is a cycle of useless pictures taken just to unlock pictures. wtf?

I'd suggest downloading it and playing with it just to learn from this uniquely frustrating experience.

>> "Mr. Flynn, who said he thought up Slingshot as a way to push his brothers to respond to his photo messages" (From NTY)[1]

What a bad reason to create a product. People don't want to respond to your messages so your create a way to try to force them to respond. Realistically they probably won't care enough to reply and now won't see your messages at all.

[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/facebook-releases-s...

Or download your stupid fucking app in the first place.

Not available to me because of my country? You mean because I'm not from the US?

Screw that.

Seems like they're trying to create more interaction and it sounds like it would be fun...for the first couple of times.

Who really wants to go out of their way to make a new video or photo to see something? We've all become accustomed to the instant gratification that the internet offers, why would we suddenly opt in for a slower experience?

Or it will turn into people sharing the same generic useless video / picture over and over just to see a video a friend sent, but then at that point why use this product at all?

But maybe I'm wrong and it will take the preteen / teen world by storm.

I'm actually excited, but only to use this with my GF and I. We do something similar with Hangouts, but this seems more fun due to the video support primarily.

I have yet to find out if the videos are temporary (i hope so)

Just like Snapchat's pictures were temporary?

The audience for this app are already using Snapchat, and Slingshot offers no value above what Snapchat already offers - I don't see anyone switching.

From the Tech Crunch article [0]: "Over the next six months, they set out to build an app where “there’s way less pressure to create because everyone is creating”, Reuben says."

I have never felt pressure to "create". Has anyone outside of the SV/SF bubble felt pressure to create?

[0]: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/17/facebook-slingshot/

>> ""Over the next six months, they set out to build an app where “there’s way less pressure to create because everyone is creating”"

WHAT? How do they go from that to: "We should force people to create and send images, even if they don't want to, just so they can see what they've been send!"

This quote is best understood from within the context of the article. At my first glance, I thought the same as you, then I read the article. Basically, they're not saying that people shouldn't feel pressure to reciprocate (obviously), they're saying that people needn't feel pressure when "creating" something, because everyone else is "creating" stuff too, so most of it won't be excellent quality. They're not trying to discourage creation, but to make it that it's not intimidating to create, because of the vast amount of crappy content there will be (so yours won't stand out as particularly bad). That's my understanding of it from a (skim) read of the TechCrunch article linked.

Thanks for the context. I read a different article (NYT one) but was commenting here as it was the top voted one at the time on HN.

I hate Facebook status update anxiety. Some days I never leave my house.

In a similar vein, there were news articles a while back that talked about how moms using Pinterest felt inadequate when they didn't do enough "creative" things for their children.

I wanted to have a look if any of my friends had this and apparently it can't be installed in the UK. Out of interest has anybody got this outside the US yet?

Not available in Canada.

Not available in Australia

Not available in New Zealand

Or Japan. Neither is Paper.

Great, another place jockeying to collect my data. Using fun social rewards to force people to submit more and more videos to their silo, but no, it's for you! Until we have enough of your data to make money off selling it to others and placing more and more restrictions on our service. Innovation?

There was an app called Rando (rando.ustwo.se/ or techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/rip-rando/) that did the same thing and became hugely popular in a few weeks only, but the creators decided to take it down. I guess Facebook just saw the opportunity and stepped in.

So Slingshot expects you to respond to something before you can find out what you're responding to?

I admire the earnestness and innocence that makes a serious discussion of this possible. I, unfortunately, do not share those qualities. Trusting Facebook to provide "ephemeral messaging" is like trusting a dog to keep a roast beef sandwich safe.

It's nice to see lots of some experiments come out of Facebook, but they should really be seen and treated as such.

Is this a revolutionary product idea? No. Is it a platform for Facebook to see what sticks and then apply to its core offering? You bet.

OMG, where is the link that describes your product or service without having to listen to rock music while being fed half a sentence at a time, please?

Oh, found it. It is labeled "Blog". And skip down to paragraph four.

I don't see how this can help then monetize more. Chances are the people who are using Slingshot already use Facebook. Where does the payoff on the investment kick in?

Maintaining/increasing interaction with Facebook. Same reason as they keep improving/changing the site and their main app, and making other side apps (e.g. Messenger). The greater the level of interaction from users, the more data they can gather etc. and also the more valuable the ads they sell become.

Also maybe monetization via in-app ads (although probably not; snapchat doesn't have them, and they'll be wanting to compete).

I guess I'm just not convinced that an app like this, which is a late clone of an insanely popular app within the target audience, will give them enough valuable data to where they can sell ads at a higher price.

Monetizing in-app with the equivalent of stickers is a possibility, but since you can already draw on the pictures I doubt that would be very effective.

The app is pretty confusing to use. For those of you stuck like I was, you actually have to complete the tutorial in order to add people and start "slinging."

I notice that you have to sign up with your phone number. Could this be a clever way to link phones with Facebook accounts that do not have a phone number ?

If Facebook is doing it, its a clever way to do something to help them serve you ads.

502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.6.0

(edit: it works now. But it didn't 15 minutes ago)

Great, another social photo sharing app that is not available on Windows Phone. I guess that is life as a second class phone OS citizen.

Not available via Play Store in Canada :( not even for the guy who gives new things a chance.

I'm feeling old since I seem to have an innate aversion to vertical photos or video.

yeah, get others ideas , do something similar and profit

I guess this is game over for snapchat?

Chlorophyll? more like borophyll...

why? serious question.

Related submissions that we buried as duplicates:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905539

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905532

It's not always obvious which post to treat as canonical, but the current thread has the most substantive discussion.

Facebook sees the writing on the wall. They replaced Myspace. Myspace (sorta) replaced Friendster. They know it's only a matter of time before someone else replaces them. They are trying as hard as they can to make sure it's an app built and controlled by them.

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