Facebook's Slingshot 2.1 for Android and iOS Adds Updated Explore Feature

The Slingshot ephemeral photo-sharing app is seen as a Snapchat rival, and with the newly-updated feature was introduced to take on Snapchat's Stories feature. The Explore feature was first rolled out to Slingshot 2.0 back in December.

"It [Explore] features popular people who are active on Slingshot. You can view their shots and then decide who you want to follow," notes the company on its blog. Describing the update on Google Play, the Slingshot team said it had made it "easier to follow people while viewing their shots and fixed a ton of bugs."

Slingshot users will be automatically featured in Explore, but disable this by turning on 'Approve Followers' in Settings.

(Also see: Snapchat Now Lets Users Record Videos While Playing Music)

Facebook had launched the Slingshot app back in June last year. The app offers similar functionality as Snapchat with allowing users to exchange disappearing photos and videos without requiring Facebook accounts. But unlike other messaging apps, Slingshot doesn't allow users to view the messages they have received from their friends until they reciprocate and send back a photo or video of their own.

Snapchat had introduced a new Discover service back in January, which features individual "channels" for its various media partners (like CNN, ESPN, National Geographic, Yahoo News and more) that include five to 10 stories a day. After 24 hours the stories disappear, in keeping with Snapchat's trademark feature of private messages that disappear a few seconds after they are viewed by users of the service.