Facebook is giving the camera a central place on its smartphone app for the first time, encouraging users to take more pictures and edit them with digital stickers that show the influence of rival Snapchat.

Users will be able to share a picture privately with a friend, rather than to all of their friends, and add a picture to a gallery known as a ‘story’, similar to a feature on the Snapchat app.

A clear social media market leader, according to Global Media Insight, UAE’s Facebook users have reached 8.7m in 2017.