News Technology

Facebook Upgrades Its Messenger Camera with New Features

Facebook has upgraded the camera on its Messenger with new features, including art and special effects, which will be globally offered over the coming days.

The new camera is quicker compared to previous versions and makes it easier for users to share moments as they happen.

In a blog post, the company stated: “We have seen that the way people are messaging is becoming much more visual. In fact, over 2.5 billion emojis, photos, stickers and videos are sent every day on Messenger.”

“In some ways the camera is now replacing the keyboard. As more people use Messenger in their everyday lives, we wanted to make it faster, simpler and more fun to send photos and videos. So we built the new Messenger camera.”

Viewers will see the shutter button in the center of the screen. Tapping the button will capture pictures and a long press will record a video.

New art and special effects are also being introduced by the Facebook.

“We are especially excited to debut 3D masks and special effects, which make it super easy to apply an artistic filter to your full screen photo and to turn your world into a work of art,” Facebook said.

Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, U.S., is the largest social networking website in the world. The Facebook website was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz. Initially, the websites membership was limited to Harvard students, but it was later expanded to include higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Since 2006, anyone aged 13 or above can register on the website.

By late 2007, there were 100,000 business pages on Facebook. These pages were created by companies to promote themselves and attract customers. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft revealed to have purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. Once year later, Facebook announced its plan to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.

In July 2010, the company announced to have touched the milestone of 500 million users, making it the world’s largest online social network at the time. At that time, almost half of the Facebook users were using the site daily, for an average of 34 minutes (according to the company’s data).

According to SecondMarket Inc., Facebook’s value in November 2010 was $41 billion, making it the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.

The initial public offering of Facebook was held in February 2012. Three months later, the company started selling stock to the public, and reached an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. As of March 31, 2016, the social network had over 1.65 billion monthly active users, and it is now also the world’s most popular social networking site based on the number of active user accounts.