Facing increasing pressure from rival social networking service Snapchat, Facebook has launched yet another app in order to convince youngsters that its products are where it's at. The new app in question is Lifestage, which is essentially a video diary where users answer biographical questions about themselves. Rather than filling in answers with text, users record a small video snippet that others can view on the uploader's profile.
There's one catch though: only people under the age of 21 can use it. Once a user goes over that age, the app loses the majority of its functionality, with users only able to see their own profile and unable to communicate with anyone else.
Created by 19-year-old Facebook product manager Michael Sayman, he says that the inspiration of the app was to replicate Facebook back when users didn't run the risk of having their posts seen by their parents or other family members, while also making the app more relevant to the times by making it focused on video.
"What if I figured out a way to take Facebook from 2004 and bring it to 2016?" he said. "What if every field in your profile was a full video?"
Since it takes inspiration from the Facebook of 2004, it looks to grow in the same way that Facebook did back then. Similar to Facebook's original college-by-college strategy, Sayman hopes Lifestage will grow by attaching itself to local high schools. Users start by selecting their own school as a network, but they won't be able to see other users unless at least 20 people from the same school start using it.
While definitely inspired, as there's no doubt that many would love to be on a popular social network where they won't have to worry about their parents seeing or posting on their wall, there are still some glaring limitations with this new app.
To start, while Lifestage is aimed at those aged 21 and under, the app has no means of verifying if users are as old as they say they are. Similarly, it can't actually confirm whether users are actually from the school they say they are from. While on the subject of schools, the app only lets users register to one school and prevents them from changing, meaning that users will need to get a new account if they ever transfer or when they graduate.
Fortunately, as the app is targeted exclusively toward teens, there are plenty of blocking and reporting features available, though it remains to be seen whether these will be responsible and if the team in charge will be able to respond to them appropriately.
While the launch of this app will provide Facebook with a chance to crack the teen demographic — especially, as the network's ad revenue shifts to mobile — it will also provide Facebook with another chance to try and keep rival Snapchat at bay.
In recent years, Facebook has launched an assortment of apps to chip away at Snapchat's user base, such as Slingshot, Riff and Poke. However, none of them caught on and it was forced to shutter the division responsible for them, Creative Labs, late last year. Most recently, Facebook-owned Instagram launched a clone of Snapchat's Stories feature with its very own Instagram Stories. In other words, this likely won't be the last anti-Snapchat move Facebook will make.
Despite these seemingly obvious intentions, however, TechCrunch's Constine suggested that the app isn't meant to succeed on its own, but to teach Facebook more about how to integrate video into people's Facebook profiles. This isn't a far-fetched assumption either, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said in the past that video will be the future social media news feeds.
And while we wait for that future to come, teens can go here to download Lifestage, though it's only available on iOS.
