Facebook testing new feature that jumps on the ‘read later’ trend

31 Jul 2012

According to reports, Facebook users may soon be given the option to save posts that appear in their news feed for later reading.

While the feature isn’t quite an Instapaper or Pocket app that parses content from online articles for reading offline, the new tool certainly has potential to grow and can be a useful way for users to collate posts from their feed.

First spotted for the iOS Facebook app by iMore, the new feature lets users save a post for later by simply by pressing and holding anywhere on the post until they see a pop-up with the ‘Save’ button. These posts will then appear in a new ‘Saved’ section in the app sidebar, but first users will have to edit their Favourites menu so that this shows up.

Facebook Save for Later

As the notification reads, these saved stories are private and therefore every save won’t be shared with a users’ Facebook friends.

The Verge later revealed that the feature has also appeared on Facebook’s mobile website and on Facebook.com, with a ‘Save’ link appearing below each post, just as ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ and ‘Share’ do.

Facebook Save for Later

This feature has not been officially announced by Facebook and it’s likely that this is just a test for functionality that may or may not be rolled out to all users at a later date.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com