Facebook tries to breathe new life into Slingshot with even more Snapchat features

Facebook isn’t ready to quit Slingshot, their novel attempt at luring the world’s youth with a Snapchat clone competitor. It’s been about 6 months since we saw Slingshot land on Google Play and after listening to user feedback, the app is seeing an update in the Play Store so big, its creators are calling it “the new Slingshot.”

There’s a lot here that’s new. For starters, the app is ironically more like Snapchat than every before, adopting their “Stories” feature by keeping photos around for 24 hours. There’s also filters (5 in all) along with captions and emojis that can be added to pictures as well as a preview mode to make sure you look your best before slingin’.

Slingshot’s new tab-based layout makes it easier to navigate inside the app and they even trimmed some of the fat, simplifying the process of sharing a photo/video down to just 2 taps. If you’re like me and don’t have any friends using Slingshot, you can use the Explore button to find randoms already using Slingshot (there aren’t many). If you have a favorite person, you can set it so the app notifies you of their new pictures.

In an effort to keep you using Slingshot versus, say, your regular camera app, everything snapped inside Slingshot can be shared to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more. In all seriousness, we love the layout, look, and ease of use of Slingshot over Snapchat. It’s just getting people we know on the service that will prove the biggest challenge.