Facebook’s Slingshot app should launch in Japan and the UK to rival Snapchat

Social media addicts in the US have finally got their hands on Facebook's ephemeral messaging app Slingshot, but the rest of the world is still left waiting.

If the social network really wants to take on rival Snapchat, and pick up some of its millions of users, Facebook needs to quickly roll out Slingshot in further markets, starting with Japan.

They can't use the app yet, but Japanese social media users have been talking about Slingshot the most outside of the US, followed by those in the UK.

The barometer of social media is a good place to start when it comes to identifying a target demographic of app hungry social sharers.

Response to Slingshot across the globe was mostly good – 65 per cent of mentions were positive according to social data from monitoring firm Meltwater.