Facebook is the largest community on Earth – if Facebook was a country, it would be now nearly equivalent or may have even surpassed China (In 4Q2013, they had 1.23B active users). So, obviously when Facebook introduces any new feature, it has potential to be used by over a billion people, and that is significant.
Facebook has now introduced a new feature called “Save on Facebook”, which could be a strong competitor to a popular “save and read it later” mobile app Pocket.
If you are a techie, you may remember that Facebook had acquired a read-it-later service called Spool almost 2 years back. Looks like Facebook has finally made use of Spool’s technology and integrated it with their mobile app. Let us look at this app in little more detail.
How does Facebook Save?
It is quite simple really – Anything that you are viewing on your Facebook timeline can be saved for accessing it at later date. And, this feature is obviously very helpful to nearly everyone because every time you stumble across something useful, you may not have time to explore or read it completely. At such time, Facebook user can simply save it and read it at leisure when they have time.
The good thing is Save can be created not only for posts but it could be links, places, movies TV or music.
One a user has save the item, it is only visible to them, however, if they want they can also choose to share it with their friends on their Facebook timeline.
Apart from this user’s saved items are organized by category and they can swipe right on each item to share it with your friends or move it into your archive list. Facebook has also added a reminder feature that will send you reminders of saved items in their news feed from time to time.
According to Facebook update, Save will be available to everyone on iOS, Android and the web over the next few days.
Threat to Pocket?
The question will obviously be asked if introduction of this new feature by Facebook will be threat to bookmarking apps like Pocket?
When behemoths like Facebook and Google introduce a new feature, it is always going to affect companies that offer similar services. Smaller players may even cease to exist. However, when it comes to Pocket, they have a established user base and offer far too many features compared to Facebook save.
What needs to be seen is how Facebook’s save service evolves. In current form, it may not be a major threat.
What is your take?
[…] has now introduced a new feature called “Save on Facebook”, which could be a strong competitor to a popular “save and read it later” mobile app […]