Facebook is one of those services that many of us don’t like. But even though we dislike them, we still continue to use Facebook. Facebook recently bought Instagram, and when I say “recently” I mean in 2013. They also attempted to buy Snapchat, but that didn’t work out. So Zuckerberg rolled Snapchat functionality into Instagram in a recent update. Facebook already has three of their own apps in the Play Store and Apple’s App Store. That’s Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook Pages Manager. To be honest, Facebook Messenger is really the only one that I use.
It looks like in 2014, Facebook is planning to expand this to be an entire “suite” of mobile apps. At least according to The Verge’ssources. Reportedly, Facebook is working on their own Flipboard competitor, which we’ve actually heard about already, and is said to be called “Paper”. It’s set to launch sometime this month, so we should see it pop up in the Play Store in the next two weeks. It’s being reported that Paper is going to serve as a news aggregation service, which will bring RSS feeds and Facebook stories all into one place. It’s looking more and more like Paper could be Facebook’s “news” application, at least that’s what The Verge thinks. While Instagram is focused on camera and Facebook messenger is focused on chat.
Currently, Facebook’s other apps aren’t being named. However, The Verge does say there’s room for a new calendar app, a mobile payment service and a search product for mobile that will use Graph Search. The Verge also pointed out that the GSMA announced today that Mark Zuckerberg is one of the keynote speakers at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month. So it’s quite possible that he may use his time on stage to introduce new mobile products that his company has prepared. So we’ll have to be on the lookout for some Facebook announcements at Mobile World Congress in late February.
How many of you are still using Facebook daily? Would you use any other apps that Facebook develops? Like the ones named in this post? Let us know in the comments below.