Facebook released a new app, called Hobbi. Hobbi is a photosharing app where you can “capture and organize your creative process”. Like arts, crafts, cooking, your hobbies basically.
Hobbi is aimed at hobbyists. The app lets you organize photos of ongoing projects into collections so users can track their progress as time goes by. It does not have a social sharing component, its more like a personal progress checker. But Hobbi can also be used to create videos of projects after they’re finished.
Hobbi’s set of features makes it a direct competitor to Pinterest. A spokesperson of Pinterest spoke to CNBC saying the company is
“focused on building a visual discovery engine.”
“Upon first look, Hobbi appears to be a photo saving app that lacks the discoverability, search, and recommendations of Pinterest. As described in the App Store, it’s meant to help you document and remember the things you do, which is about the past, while Pinterest is about discovering ideas and inspiring action for the future,”
Facebook created its New Product Experimentation team last year, with the goal of developing experimental apps outside of facebook’s core apps. They have so far created a meme making app called Whale, A social networking app called Bump and music DJ app Aux.
For now, Hobbi seems only to be available in the App Store. First released in Colombia, Belgium, Spain, and Ukraine according to The Information. It was found on a US-based phone yesterday evening. It’s compatible with devices running iOS 11.0 or later.
Hobbi may or may not fit into Facebook’s, overall brand, but Facebook has said to expect many failures from its New Product Experimentation. This may or may not be one of them.
