Facebook at its F8 developer conference in San Francisco made several announcements, and one major one was that for the first time, it is making available its “Save to Facebook” button for use on websites other than its own. This button allows users to add content to a list of things that need attention, to which they can refer later.
Expanding the scope of the Save button
In 2014, Facebook introduced the Save button, and now more than 250 million use it. Now since the company has decided to break the feature out of Facebook for developers to add to their sites; therefore, it is very possible people will start valuing it more than before.
Facebook does have a trick up its sleeve behind this move – whenever the content people save becomes available in Instant Article format, the company will direct people to its fast-loading Instant Articles.
In a blog post, Facebook Software Engineer Ming Li said, “At relevant times, we’ll also remind people about their saved things — like when a product goes on sale, or if they’ve saved an article they haven’t read yet.”
Speaking to VentureBeat, Facebook Product Manager Eddie O’Neil said the company has given permission to publishers and retailers to test out the feature on their sites.
Facebook – a threat to smaller firms
Such news should be noteworthy for Pocket, a startup that was previously known by the name “Read It Later.” In February, there were more than 22 million Pocket users or less than 10% of the total Facebook’s Save button user base, says a report from VentureBeat.
Just like Pinterest and Betaworks-owned Instapaper, Pocket too has a browser extension. Facebook does not currently have that, so to add the Save button to their sites, developers will be required to voluntarily adopt the appropriate plug-in. In addition, the Save feature is inherently not social (unlike Facebook), suggesting only the user will be able to see his/her collection of the saved sites.
Apart from this Save to Facebook feature, the social networking giant also announced a new quote-sharing feature that will supposedly make content sharing with friends easier. When a developer integrates with Facebook’s quote-sharing feature, it will be possible for users to share from an article or book without any need to copy and paste content from one app into another. Taking a screen shot of the text before posting it on the platform will also become simpler.
