Facebook has just launched a new feature called "Save," which lets users flag links, movies, TV shows, places and music for later viewing.
The new function, which is Facebook's answer to popular read-it-later apps like Pocket and Instapaper, allows people to move content from their news feeds into a specified list within the social network.
Save, which will come out in the next few days, will be spread out between the service's Android, iOS and Web versions. Saved links and places on Facebook's mobile app can be found under the "More" tab. Flagged content on desktops, on the other hand, can be found on a "Save" link in the Facebook sidebar.
Facebook stated that saved content is private, and can only be viewed by the person who built the list. The flagged content is divided by type, and can either be archived or shared with friends. However, unlike Pocket, visiting saved links would require an Internet connection.
While it doesn't offer advantages in terms of features, the Save function is more convenient than other similar apps because users wouldn't have to be redirected to a different service to save a link from their news feed.
While Save is definitely useful, a new Facebook tool that's designed to mine information about user habits is sure to make people wary. After all, the company is still recovering from the outcry over its "emotion contagion" experiments with users. The study, which it conducted with researchers from Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco, involved taking emotional words out of people's news feeds to see what effects it would have on their "likes" and status updates. Almost 700,000 users were included in the experiments without their consent.
Over a week ago, Facebook was once again criticized by privacy advocates due to changes in its ad policy, which critics say expanded its ability to collect the personal data of users. The social network announced that it will source the ads that appear on its service through other websites. The changes, which will roll out over the next few weeks, will only be available to US users.
Facebook will not use the Save feature for ad targeting, at least for now. "Currently you cannot target ads specifically to saved content. We will explore this more in the coming months but don't have anything more to announce right now," a company spokesperson said.
