Remember six
months ago when Snapchat introduced its crazy selfie
lens feature that sort of went viral? Facebook wants in on the “how’d
you do that” action too so it bought the recently launched app Masquerade (stylized
as MSQRD) to instantly have access to its own selfie filter
features.
Masquerade, which only launched on iOS in December, works
similarly to Snapchat’s filter feature seen above by using facial recognition
over video to transform faces with comical filter effects. Tech Insider first
reported the acquisition; the developers behind the popular iOS app later
confirmed the acquisition (without disclosing deal details) in a blog post. For
Masquerade fans, the founders say to expect the app (which is also available on
Android) to continue to be maintained with new features coming soon:
Now,
we’re excited to join forces with Facebook and bring the technology to even
more people. Within Facebook, we’re going to be able to reach people at a scale
like never before. For starters, we’ll be able to bring our technology to
Facebook’s audience of nearly 1.6 billion people. This is a scale of audience
we never imagined was possible.
While we
will be partnering with Facebook to integrate our technology, the app will stay
up and running so you’ll continue to record fun selfies and keep using the
product. You can also expect us to keep adding fun features!
Masquerade, which features technology
that could easily make its way to Facebook’s own app, isn’t the first time the
major social network has tried to take on its competitor Snapchat with similar
features.
Three years ago, Facebook turned its ‘poke’ feature from its
website into
a standalone appthat worked a lot like Snapchat, but pulled it after few updates and little traction a year
and a half later. Giving the whole Snapchat thing another shot, Facebook
later introduced another standalone app called Slingshot, then
fast-forward a year and a half later and that too disappeared.
But Masquerade’s
outlook seems promising at least in the short-term, and their technology could
easily be put to use throughout Facebook’s photo services and messaging apps
like Instagram and Messenger, and the standalone Masquerade app sound like
it has some new features in the pipeline for its fans. You can download Masquerade for
free on the App Store.
