Social networking giant, Facebook is planning to launch its own photo sharing application called, ‘Facebook Camera’ on Thursday on in Apple's App Store.

The standalone app come as surprise to some as the company recently acquired Instagram for a sum of $1 billion. Instagram is the maker of a social network built around photography that offers mobile apps that allow users to edit their pictures with quirky effects and share them with friends.

Facebook Camera, is a standalone Facebook application and is independent of Facebook app proper. The photos on the app will be shown on full-screen spanning the entire screen and it will also allow users to like and comment directly.

The will run much faster and thus the users will be able to view pictures much faster than photos within Facebook's proper app. The users will also be able to easily add the pictures without the need for opening the Facebook in the browser.

Facebook officials have said that the company is working on the project much longer than since Facebook started planning to acquire Instagram. They also point out that the standalone app could provide insurance in case the deal to acquire Instagram by Facebook, which is not being looked in to by the FTC, is not approved, even as they agree the chances of the deal falling apart are very low.