After failing to buy Snapchat for $3 billion last year, Facebook has just remembered that it can code too. Mark Zuckerberg himself is allegedly supervising the creation of Slingshot, which will be Facebook's direct competitor to Snapchat.

The new app, so far known as "Slingshot," could be released as early as this month but it seems it will be a video messaging app, in which pictures and videos will disappear after one view. This will be the second time that Facebook has attempted to make a video sharing app, Poke, in 2012 failed so badly that even Zuckerberg called it a "a joke." Poke was removed from the service a few weeks ago, potentially to make room for Slingshot.

Slingshot will be a standalone app, completely useable without using Facebook. Snapchat only requires a phone number for an activated account, Facebook will push teens to sign up with their Facebook account. It is not clear if Facebook will find itself on the end of an IP war over the technology, so it will have to be substantially different from Snapchat.