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Facebook’s NPE Team, its experimental app division designed to play around with new mobile ideas, has a new product out called Kit, short for “Keep in Touch.” It’s a messaging app exclusive to the Apple Watch, and it lets you “send a voice message, your location or an emoji” with just a tap of the Watch screen.
“You also have easy access to speech-to-text. We hope that Kit helps you keep in touch with those most important to you — without constantly needing to pick up your phone,” the description continues. As TechCrunch notes, the app lets you send a variety of messages, like voice recordings and ones containing your location data, similar to how Apple’s iMessage functions on the Watch already. The one difference is that the messages are routed over Facebook Messenger.
“Kit makes keeping in contact from your watch easy,” the app’s App Store description reads. “Everything you need to compose a message is just one tap away. No more struggling to navigate a tiny screen to find the right option. To get started, just scan the QR code on your watch and pick a contact. One tap lets you send a voice message, your location or an emoji. You also have easy access to speech-to-text.”
You swipe to see your contact’s messages on the right, and you can receive and respond to notifications from your top Messenger contact.
The app looks pretty bare, and it’s basically just a stripped-down version of Facebook Messenger with a few extra Apple Watch-specific features, despite Messenger already having an Apple Watch counterpart. Facebook is likely letting some of its product designers have the freedom to experiment so that they maybe stumble upon a fresh new idea that could potentially be useful in one of its established products like Messenger or Instagram. The company has a reputation for keeping its eye on the mobile market and either cloning or acquiring new startups, like it did to Snapchat with its signature .
It must be noted that using Kit requires a Facebook Messenger account because all communication is routed via the company’s messaging platform.
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