Facebook's Slingshot Goes International Just A Week After Official Launch

Facebook's recently released Snapchat competitor, Slingshot, has gone international, just a week after its launch. Slingshot first became available on the App Store a couple of weeks ago, but only briefly. Seemingly in keeping with its "ephemeral" essence, it was immediately pulled by Facebook after an apparently premature appearance. The app wasn't officially released by Facebook until a week ago. But much to the chagrin of international users, Slingshot was made available initially for users in the U.S. only. As it turned out, though, non-U.S. users didn't have to wait long to get their hands on Slingshot. If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here. In a new blog post, the Slingshot team has announced that the app has been made available internationally:

Since we launched last week, we’ve heard from lots of people around the world who are excited to give Slingshot a try. Starting today, we’re expanding our initial launch and making Slingshot available internationally!

Slingshot is so named because it requires recipients to “sling” a shot, i.e. a photo or a video, back to senders in order to view messages. It’s Facebook’s latest attempt at taking on Snapchat following its failed Poke app. For more information on the app, check out our original review here on AppAdvice. Optimized for iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or later, Slingshot is available now worldwide on the App Store for free. Slingshot's international rollout is quite quick, considering that Paper, which was launched by Facebook late last January, is still U.S.-only. See also: Facebook Pages Manager Update Brings A New Look And More, Snapchat To Introduce 'Our Story' At The Electric Daisy Carnival In Las Vegas, and Facebook Messenger To Gain New Snapchat-Like Feature For Instant Video Sharing. [gallery]