Facebook isn't just a social network or a public company. It's an app developer. It's therefore not unusual for Facebook to launch apps that undercut the competition or put its services front and center on your device.

Facebook's latest app, for instance, looks to be a Twitter replacement. The company has been working on a real-time standalone app called Notify, according to a report today by The Awl. Leaked screenshots from the app appear to show how it works; from what we can tell, Notify lets you subscribe to and receive notifications from news outlets.

Notifications arrive in real-time and are divided into two sections - called Providers and Stations. Providers likely sorts notifications from all your favourite publishers and content creators, while stations probably groups notifications from each publisher under separate sections. You might just want election news from CNN, for example.

These leaked screenshots only represent some screens within the upcoming app. The main home screen will more than likely act as a clean news reader or a feed of stories and content. The idea here is people already get real-time alerts pushed to their devices from different apps, like Twitter, but Facebook's Notify would replace them.

With Notify, Facebook will have the opportunity to ping you with news notifications all day long, and if you take advantage of them, you'll never really have a need to use Twitter or other news-aggregation tools again.

Although Notify is currently being tested, it could launch this month.