By Joe Arcuri, Director of Multichannel Services, Palio

I consider myself a pretty active Instagram-user, I really dig the filters and blurring effects that are at the heart of the app.

So when Facebook released their companion camera app, I was very anxious to see how it stacked up. Especially since FB purchasing their biggest competitor, Instagram prior to the camera release.

After installing it I was pretty excited to see what it’s capabilities were. One of (the few) complaints I have with Instagram is if I like a friends’ photo in the app, it doesn’t share on my FB wall.

My first impression opening the app was a good one with the design of the UI, it carried over the familiar FB blue and had some nice detail in the icons. I took some shots and added the supplied filters, which were nice. They were all pretty cool effects. Then I went to add a blur – what no blur feature, major FAIL. This is one of my fave features of Instagram. Hopefully they will be adding this in the near future. The fact you can add multiple photos is nice since the FB app doesn’t let you do this, but you can’t chose what album to upload to.

You can browse your friend’s photos, and add comments fairly smoothly; I like how you can slide horizontally through multiple images in a post.

Here’s another issue, Facebook now has 4 different apps in which to interact with your FB community. This is getting a little out of control. Why not bake in the messenger and the cam app into the native FB app??

I surveyed a variety of FB users and 4/5 had no idea there was a camera app, another FAIL. Overall I would wait on this, until they flush out the areas that need more attention.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.