TechCrunch has posted a screenshot of what they claim to be a new photo sharing app for iPhone developed by Facebook and soon to be released in the App Store. The new app, internally codenamed “Hovertown” or “WithPeople” according to the website, from a first look at the leaked documents looks like a mix of Instagram, Color, Path and With. With the exception of Instagram (for those who don’t know, an iPhone app / social network that allows you to share photos in seconds with cool built-in effects and geo-tagging capabilities), all the other apps mentioned by MG Siegler are photo sharing solutions meant to capture what’s around you, with people that are with you, are share it with people you know. Basing on these alleged similarities and the screenshot itself, Facebook may be working on an iPhone app that leverages the social graph and location information to share places, people and moments in single shots or entire photo streams.
How do we know? We have obtained roughly 50 MB of images and documents outlining the entire thing.
To be honest, we’re still sorting through all of them. But again, the app looks amazing. We’ve heard that internally it is being called either “Hovertown” or “WithPeople”. And while it looks like a stand-alone app right now, there are also signs that it could be eventually integrated into Facebook’s main iPhone app — as well as the main site.
It’s unclear whether the new photo product may be integrated with the official Facebook iPhone app (which is heavily web-based as far as the interface goes) in a new photos tab or if Facebook is really planning on releasing it as a standalone application. The Facebook iPhone app is the most popular free app of all time, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Facebook growing its catalogue of official software for the iOS platform. Facebook has been criticized for not having a native iPad app, a choice that has allowed third-party developers to build their own paid and successful solutions for the tablet.
Update: TechCrunch has posted more screenshots of the upcoming Facebook app that may or may not be integrated in the official application come the final release. The screenshots show multi-shot mode, stacks, sets, location features, comments and much more. From what we can see, it appears the app will be focused on letting you easily group shots together, add location and tags and send off to Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook will leverage its social graph to enable users to reply to photos, set up related albums or, say, simply interact with the photos to leave and delete comments.
Check out the full gallery at TechCrunch.
