The world’s largest social networking platform Facebook has had a tough couple of weeks.
With the revelation of Cambridge Analytica’s mining of personal information to Facebook’s recording data from Android smartphone users’ phone calls, things have been a little tough for Zuckerberg and company.
But this hasn’t stopped Facebook from releasing new features for its most popular apps, among them is its popular Messenger app.
If you don’t have Facebook or haven’t downloaded Messenger to your phone, it is basically a chat app that comes loaded with a host of other features.
And now you can add one more to that already long list: Facebook has added its popular 360-degree photos to Facebook Messenger, allowing users to send full panoramas over the service for the first time.
Previously it was possible to capture and post such photos through the Facebook app but Messenger will allow you to send it directly (and privately) to people you choose – no more need to post it for the world on your profile.
The only drawback is the 360 images and 720p video will have to be captured outside of Messenger as the app won’t have that functionality built into it. But that shouldn’t be a big drawback for many people as most smartphone camera apps come equipped with these features and this will likely be the route Facebook takes in enabling the feature in Messenger.
You will of course have various quality controls and other options.
It’s interesting to see Messenger delve deeper into the photo-sharing and communications space as this is an area very much in the purview of competing platform Snap which operates the photo sharing and messaging service Snapchat.
While Snapchat has maintained its relevance in the face of the combined Facebook-Instagram-Messenger onslaught, it remains under heavy pressure to innovate and outpace Facebook’s already intense level of development. Of course, fans of social media and photo sharing services benefit as it gives everyone one more outlet to distribute their work.
