New reports suggest Facebook is developing yet another app. Codenamed “Moments,” it will allow you to share private updates with close friends and family.
TechCrunch spoke with multiple sources at Facebook who said the new app is currently being tested internally to hash out any bugs and to improve functionality.
One employee told TechCrunch “Moments” resembles another app — Cluster, which allows users to share photos with small subsets of their friends instead of everyone at once.
It's also being compared to Path, an app which created its own social network for people wanting to update close friends on intimate details like when they wake up or go to sleep.
So if there are already apps out there like Moments, what’s the reasoning behind the social media giant introducing yet another one?
Well, even though Facebook is no stranger to creating apps similar to other popular apps, this time it may be about something else — bypassing its convoluted privacy settings.
Right now, in order to make sure only friends or family see a post, users have to navigate menus choosing who they want to see the post or make lists of specific people. Even then, it still appears in their feed like everything else.
Moments would allow users to get around those menus and lists to share content with friends and family in a different way, albeit it’d also be another app to download. As one writer for The Verge put it:
“We don't need one more network to manage, we need a better way to quickly share something with our family, and then have them understand that we've shared it with only them when it pops up in their news feed.”
Others are not so eager that Facebook is releasing yet another app.
ReadWrite says Facebook is playing into something called “app inflation” where larger social media networks break up their services into different apps. But the author says that doesn't work.
"These apps, it turns out, are primarily used for what Localytics calls 'snacking.' People open them frequently, but they don't stick around that long. Social apps, it turns out, commanded user attention for only about 2.5 minutes at a time."
The New York Times interviewed Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year asking him about releasing new apps. For him, splitting up Facebook's functions was about creating ease of access and increasing notifications.
No word yet on when Moments, or whatever its final name is, would be rolled out, if it ever sees the light of day. At this point, Facebook hasn't even confirmed the app's existence.
This video contains images from Getty Images.
