Facebook for Every Phone gets photo filters à la Instagram
Facebook today updated the Facebook for Every Phone app with two photo filters: Black & White and Sepia. As you can see in the screenshot above, all you have to do to apply one of these photo filters is click the "Effects" button on the photo edit screen, pick your filter, and voilà. Here's how Facebook describes the update:
As part of our ongoing efforts to create a better Facebook mobile experience across all devices, we are excited to announce that the Facebook for Every Phone app now has two filters, sepia and black-and-white, for your mobile photos.
Take pictures, change their look, and share with your friends straight from your app.
This is a bizarre move because photo filters are hardly a core Facebook feature. Yes, Facebook did just pay $300 million in cash and 23 million shares for Instagram, which made photo filters very popular on mobile devices. I assure you, however, that the two events are unrelated.
Facebook has not ported over photo filters to the Facebook service, nor for the various Facebook apps for smartphones. It's thus odd to see the feature, as basic as it is, appear on Facebook for feature phones, and especially before smartphones.
Back in July 2011, Facebook launched the Facebook for Every Phone app on over 2,500 different feature phones (sometimes referred to as dumb phones). Last month, Facebook updated that number to over 3,600 dumb phones.
The feature phone app includes what Facebook says are the social networks' most popular features: News Feed, Inbox, and Photos. It also lets you upload photos and find friends from your phone's contacts. Now we can add photo filters to that list.
To install the app, visit m.facebook.com and scroll down to the download link, or enter d.facebook.com/install directly into your mobile browser. Alternatively, you can get it from leading app stores, including GetJar, Appia, and Mobile Weaver.
Here's a tidbit worth underlining. The official Facebook for Every Phone (82.3 million Likes) Facebook Page is the most popular Facebook Page of all. That's right, it's even more popular than the official Facebook Page (66.0 million Likes) for Facebook itself. Sorry, I realize that was probably a mouthful.
I have contacted Facebook for more information on today's release and will update you if I hear back.
See also:
- Facebook: 60 million users access apps via mobile
- Facebook partners with Bango, mobile billing coming soon?
- Facebook for Android passes Facebook for iPhone (DAU)
- Facebook is now the most popular Android app
- Apple: Angry Birds, Facebook most popular iPhone apps of 2011
- Facebook: "We're going to become a mobile company"