We’ve known Facebook is serious about photos: Heck, it dropped a cool $1 billion on Instagram, the immensely popular mobile photo sharing app. What we didn’t know, however, is that Facebook was essentially building its own version of a stand-alone mobile photo sharing application, ostensibly to compete with Instagram before it took over the mobile photo sharing world completely. How do I know that? Because Facebook will launch the product this afternoon in Apple’s App Store. It’s called Facebook Camera, and it’s essentially Instagram redux. One, it’s a standalone Facebook application, separate from the Facebook app proper, much like the company’s Facebook Messages app. Facebook Photos product manager Dirk Stoop told me in an interview this morning, it’s an instant portal to one of Facebook’s ... Continue reading →