Facebook is reportedly working on a new app to rival Snapchat. The app is known internally as ‘Slingshot’ and it features a simple and quick user interface for video chat, reports the Financial Times.

The app allows users to send short video messages with just a couple of taps of the screen. Slingshot could be launched this month, one person said, while cautioning that Facebook might still decide not to proceed with launching the product. Slingshot is likely to stand alone from Facebook Messenger, its popular texting app, as part of Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of unbundling the group’s social network into standalone mobile services. 

Work on the app follows Facebook’s failed attempts to purchase Snapchat for $3 billion. The app is very popular with teenagers, a segment which Facebook is reporting falling engagement numbers.

In December 2012, Facebook launched Poke as a Snapchat rival but that app failed to catch on and was removed from the App Store just a week ago.

Slingshot is said to be resemble TapTalk, a video messaging app that lets you tap or hold a contact’s profile picture to send a photo or video that can only be viewed once by the recipient.

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