Facebook Announces 'Save' Button: Bookmarking Feature Could Lead to Read-it-Later App, What It Means for You and Advertisers
Soon after Facebook announced the "Buy" button, the social media giant is working on another new feature yet again as it launches the "Save" button, which will allow users to save links, photos, music, places and more for later viewing.
Basically, it is a bookmarking feature that collects items that people find interesting on their feed but do not have the time to check out right away, Facebook software engineer Daniel Giambalvo said via Newsroom. He added that Facebook users would be able to save items such as links, movies, TV shows, music and places for later when they have more time to enjoy them.
Facebook had actually started testing the "Save" button for the mobile app back in July 2012 after the company acquired Spool in the same year. Spool is a read-it-later app that could cache articles and other content to the phone for later viewing. It also offered offline support.
However, Facebook never rolled out this feature and the "Save" button does not cache the link's content like similar apps Instapaper and Pocket. The company's reason for this is probably so it would not rob its partners of ad views since caching content eliminates the need to visit the actual page, TechCrunch reports.
With this feature, users will not have to disrupt the flow of going through their News Feed and they will not have to worry about missing interesting posts as they scroll down by saving the links. Furthermore, Facebook users would also not have to worry about their friends seeing their saved posts as long as they are only visible to the user.
Another included feature is that Facebook will remind its users of the saved items on their News Feeds occasionally in case they forgot. From there, they could decide again if they still want to read the saved links. It also allows users to save places of interest while traveling or if they want to share their favorite restaurants or attractions with their friends.
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