Facebook's Slingshot app goes live

After an accidental leak, Facebook's Slingshot app has now gone official. Widely regarded as a SnapChat competitor, Slingshot does have an ephemeral element to it, to delete photos and videos just simply swipe them away. But that's just the gist of it.

While Snapchats are more one-on-one conversations, Slingshot wants you to involve all your friends into a real-time sharing social network. But there's a catch, to see what your friends are sharing you have to "Sling" something back. Its the first-of-its-kind social network which requires 100% participation from all people participating. It has been made by the Creative Labs team over at Facebook HQ, whose first app, Paper is also available on the App Store.

Its really easy to sign-up, just enter your phone number and select if you want to find friends using your contact list or Facebook login (not mandatory). Once done, you can see your friends who are using the app or invite them aboard. After login you are straightaway sent to the camera interface with Flash control, Shoot and Selfie modes. Once you take a shot you can edit it, doodle it or add a caption. The image is automatically tagged with your location, time and username. There are some clever sound effects built in to make the experience livelier.

You can then select use to come to the "sling view" from where you can see all your friends who are using Slingshot.  You can even unlock all of the received images by using the blast mode to forward the image or video you took to a group or all your friends.

Given that you are "forced" to respond to an image or video with your own, Slingshot might not find that many takers. But as its all shiny and new at the moment, there's some fun to be had.

Source: SlingShot