Facebook quietly rolls out meme-making app ‘Whale’

San Francisco, Nov. 19 (IANS): Social media giant Facebook has quietly rolled out a meme-making app called ‘Whale’ on the Canadian App Store that may come to other markets including in India later.

The app’s listing confirms that it has been developed by Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, which was set up earlier this year to develop new experimental apps for the social networking platform that has over 2.6 billion users globally.

‘Whale’ is the latest app from NPE, after music app ‘AUX’ and chat app ‘Bump’, reports The Information.

According to Facebook, these apps are intended to help the company discover new features and services that people like.

Facebook is slowly launching apps in new genres beyond chats to woo more users and open new avenues to make money.

Facebook-owned Instagram has also launched a new video-music remix feature called “Reels” to take on Chinese short video making app TikTok.

“Just like TikTok, users can soundtrack their ‘Reels’ with a huge catalog of music, or borrow the audio from anyone else’s video to create a remix of their meme or joke.

Rolled out in the Brazilian market first, “Reels” will be available on both iOS and Android.