Facebook’s attempt of copying Snapchat features into their own features seems to have extended well beyond just features in some part of the world. According to a new report, Facebook has developed an actual Snapchat clone available only in developing countries.
Although it’s a slight exaggeration to call it a Snapchat clone, the new app has most of the same features. Additionally, this is not even Facebook’s first attempt to recreate Snapchat after they failed to acquire the company last year. Apps like Poke and Slingshot were meant to be legitimate competitors to Snapchat. Unfortunately for Facebook, all the apps flopped.
Their newest attempt is called Flash and was designed with the emerging countries in mind. More specifically, they developed the app considering the conditions of an ordinary user in countries with low GDP such a number of African countries, South-American or South Asian ones. Most the factors they considered included the scarcity of Wi-Fi as well as the low connectivity and speeds.
For this reason, Flash is less than 25 MB in size, only a third as big as Snapchat. This means that interested users will be able to download the app faster and it won’t require much space on their phones. This might be a real advantage for Facebook if the app will truly offer a comparable service in terms of features and various functions.
Snapchat has around 60 million daily users in the US. This is a stranglehold on the market that Facebook has not been able to loosen. However, Snapchat is not as established in other parts of the world. Facebook is trying to garner the interest of teenagers in untapped markets for the instant chat app like Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
Flash is already available on Android for Brazil, its first market. A future wider release will occur gradually for other regions. No plans regarding when and where have not been disclosed as of yet. It will be interesting to see if Facebook will decide to release the app in developed countries as well even though it won’t be able to compete with Snapchat in the US, at least for now.
Are you using Snapchat? If not, what other messaging apps do you use and what do you think about Facebook’s Snapchat clone?
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