Facebook just launched a new app named E.gg where users can create 'personalized spaces' that look like Tumblr pages
- Facebook has a new app called E.gg that allows users to create personalized websites.
- E.gg is described as a "digital zine creator," and was introduced with a similarly ancient reference: websites circa 1999.
- It's goal is broad: to "give creative control back to people" and to "create a low-pressure space for the really unpolished and mismatched things" that the early days of the internet embodied.
- E.gg is free and available now on Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Facebook's experimental software division is back with another new app: E.gg, which it describes as a "digital zine creator."
In practice, the app enables users to create shareable websites that look like a mixture between a high school locker circa 1995 and a Tumblr page circa 2015 — what Facebook describes as "free-form mixed media collages."
These collages are then given shareable URLs, just like normal websites, and are intended to "create a low-pressure space for the really unpolished and mismatched things" that the early days of the internet embodied.
To that end, Facebook introduced E.gg with a website that looks ripped from your old GeoCities account, dancing baby GIF and all:
E.gg also comes at a time when Facebook has seen a decline in users — particularly among Gen Z according to Edison Research — and Facebook-owned Instagram is increasingly focusing attention on its in-app shopping features, evidenced by a redesign of the home screen.
With its new app, Facebook is hoping for the type of user activity that used to be common in its products: Creativity and expression.
E.gg is part of Facebook's "NPE" group, an acronym that stands for "New Product Experimentation."
The group, which acts as somewhat of a concept incubator inside Facebook, has released a handful of prior apps — from a matchmaking services to meme making tool.
Like its prior apps, E.gg is free and available now on the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad users.
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