The app might be only a fictional one, destined to test ads

Jul 25, 2014 14:04 GMT  ·  By

Facebook has been long expected to make official a true Snapchat successor, and chances are that said application might have just leaked online.

To be more precise, the full application is still unknown, but a reference to it appears to have emerged via the official Instagram application for Android (Instagram is part of Facebook now, in case you didn't know).

As a screenshot that Twitter user Richard Groves has posted online shows, the aforementioned application could be called Bolt and should provide users with “one tap photo messaging” capabilities.

The link to said Bolt application has been spotted in the Instagram for Android mobile client, where the app has been deemed as being free. However, the link didn’t go anywhere, and TechCrunch suggests that it might be only a fake app, destined to test out a new ad platform.

As The Verge notes, Facebook has rolled out app install ads recently, and there is a chance that the social network is already testing them in Instagram, yet no official confirmation on this has been provided as of now.

Whether Bolt is a real application or not, it remains to be seen. At the moment, Facebook’s official Snapchat competitor, an app available on Android and iOS, is called Slingshot.

Although it offers sharing capabilities similar to Snapchat, Slingshot requires users to send content back to the person who shared something with them, otherwise they cannot see what they have received.