14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook is reportedly working on a new app that seeks to encourage users to share content privately. So far, the project is codenamed “Moments,” although it could very well bear a different name when it sees the light of day.
TechCrunch reports that the social network has been working on this new app for a while now and it has even reached the live internal testing phase.
The product is currently being used just by employees, who are testing out the functionality and seeking to squash bugs. The app seems to be quite easy to use, coming with a clean interface with a few tiles arranged in a grid.
You can add people to groups such as Family and Friends and then share information with these individuals for an added sense of privacy. Of course, more groups can be created, such as for work colleagues, former school mates and so on.
“Moments” seeks to fix what Facebook hasn’t managed to do, namely to get people to pay more attention to the groups they share information with and to put together customized groups that can see various types of information. It seems that the app looks very much like Cluster, an app that provides pretty much the same type of personalized information sharing.
The app could come in handy to all those people out there who have shared updates on Facebook only to realize they’ve made the post public by mistake, as well as to those who don’t really like to post things online for fear that the information will reach too many people.
The unpopular Friend Lists
Facebook has been struggling for years to make people create Friend lists, but they haven’t really been successful. The adoption rate is very small and that’s because people just don’t have the time or patience to set up such a thing on their accounts, even though it would obviously be beneficial for their online privacy.
The company revamped the Friend List feature a few times over the years, going as far as to automatically create lists of family members, co-workers and friends, but not even that worked.
It remains to be seen whether “Moments” makes its way to the market anytime soon or if the project will be binned like many other such apps before it. If it does get released, it should be interesting to see how deep the integration with Facebook will go.