Facebook’s iOS camera app now named Camera•, falls in line with iOS 6 integration

 

If you updated Facebook's newly released camera application for your iPhone or iPad in the past 24 hours or so, you may noticed the app has changed names from "Camera" to "Camera•" and thought it was an error or the result of a glitch. If so, you'll be happy to know that this is indeed the official Facebook photo application, and its mysterious name change was entirely intentional.

Camera• has all the same functionality, and really nothing has changed aside from its subtle name tweak, but why would Facebook go through the trouble of altering the app's moniker and potentially confusing its users? The answer is simple: Apple.

You see, yesterday at Apple's WWDC keynote event, the company revealed that Facebook will finally be integrated into iOS in much the same way that Twitter already is. This type of agreement isn't made lightly, and all signs point to Apple requesting the Facebook camera app be renamed in order to avoid confusion with the native photo feature built in to iOS, also named "Camera."

It may seem like a silly change — and adding a dot to the end of the name is about as mild of an alteration as can be made — but it should help users discern one app from another when iOS 6 spreads to millions of mobile handsets the world over.