Almost a year ago, Facebook released their Moments App which allows you to send and receive photos between friends, or groups and organise them. There is not much difference to any other photo sharing app, except it focuses mostly on the photos you have uploaded to Facebook. However, surprisingly the company also recently announced that all Facebook photos that are not synced with the Moments App would eventually be deleted. This may sound like a familiar scenario, with the same thing occurring with Facebook Messenger.
According to a recent Tech Crunch article, the company is taking an extra step to email users about the new app and prompting them to download it. Nevertheless, many users are displeased with the threat of losing all their previously synced personal photos on the website/app. The current final deadline we have been given to store our photos is July 7th.
An article by Alyssa Newcomb on ABC News states that as of this morning, Moments was the No. 1 free app in the App Store and No.2 on Google Play. Many people have already begun tweeting in anger at Facebook for having to install yet another app to do something that could previously be done in the native Facebook app itself. It is believed to be an unnecessary addition, but I guess we will just have to wait it out and see what happens next.
Originally the major appeal of Facebook was that there were all these components moulded into one. On just one source of social media, users were able to share ‘moments’ through photos and videos, as well as messaging friends. It seems breaking Facebook apart simply defeats the whole purpose of having one platform to multitask on. However, The Guardian see this as a rouse by Facebook to not only attract its existing user base, but also new users to a newly created platform.
