Do you get annoyed when friends take photos of you, and they never send them to you? Facebook is launching a new standalone app called Moments, that makes it easier to share photos with friends.
Moments scans your camera roll for familiar faces, and helps you share photos with the people in the picture. The social network is already using facial recognition technology to make tag suggestions on Facebook, but Moments takes it to the next level. If your friends use the app, they will see all of the photos they were tagged in. If they haven’t installed the Moments app yet, they will receive a notification that says they have photos waiting for them in the app.
Facebook’s Moments app is a great way for people to share photos from weddings, birthday parties, concerts, and family reunions. You can also search for photos of your friends, save photos to your phone’s camera roll, and share photos directly on Facebook or Instagram — all within the app. Conversely, those who don’t want to be tagged in any group photos, can opt out using Facebook’s settings.
“I expect we’ll learn something from Moments that will ultimately make its way into the main app, but we’re really focused on making Moments a space on its own,”Facebook’s Product manager Will Ruben told The Verge. “The sharing on Moments is really different from sharing in other apps — it’s a much more private kind of sharing with specific friends. I think it has a space to stand on its own.”
Moments is brought to you by Creative Labs, the same team that released apps like Paper, Hello, Mentions, and Slingshot. While most of these creative projects haven’t exactly made it to the mainstream, they are a key part of Facebook’s experiments. It will be interesting to see if Moments will go viral or if it will fade away like many of Facebook’s new app ventures.
Moments is available for download in the U.S. on iOS App Store or Android Google Play. According to Facebook, Moments will be “rolling out to more countries over time.”
