The social giant Facebook has been planning to kill its Photo Sync feature since 2015. On January 10th, 2016, the company began phasing out the three-year-old photo syncing feature to reflect the shifting user habits.
The feature was first introduced in 2012. It allowed users to automatically upload photos they had taken using their mobile devices to a private album dedicated only the individual owner. After being uploaded, the user can then review each and every one of the photos, and decide which to share and which to remove.
The Photo Sync feature was indeed handy for traditional desktop PC users. But since mobile users are growing rapidly thanks to the variety of mobile devices available on the market, increased internet speed using 4G/LTE network as well as wireless connections that are widely available, the trend has shifted.
"We are phasing out Facebook's photo syncing feature," said a Facebook. "Photo syncing is an opt-in experience that syncs photos taken on your mobile phone to a private section on Facebook, viewable only to you, where you can view or post the photos if you choose. The feature was launched in 2012 when people took photos on their phones, but still posted primarily from computers."
Facebook first notified its users back in December 2015, saying that it would begin to stop the support for the feature.
For users that are already using Photo Sync, Facebook is providing a way for them to recover images that were processed using the feature. And as a solution for them, Facebook recommends its Moments app.
Moments is a newer version of the feature. Taking the form of an app, its core is pretty much similar to Photo Sync. The company said that previously synced photos can be moved to the app where they can be organized. But the app is different than Photo Sync.
Photo Sync was always great way to backup photos from a device's camera roll. This enabled users to save up many space on a mobile device by uploading and saving photos on Facebook's servers. On the other hand, Moments doesn't have the same exact capabilities.
Moments instead sorts the photos into groups to be shared privately. For Facebook users used to the free backup, they'll need to clear out some space on their phone for all the images they have, or find a new service other than Facebook or Moments to automatically sync to.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, "People that use photo syncing will have the option to move the photos they've previously synced to our new app Moments, where they will be able to view, download, or delete them.
If they don't want to download Moments, they will also be able to download a zip file of their synced photos on their computer, or delete them through their Facebook profiles."
The Moments app has been gaining positive momentum and has the potential to become a more mainstream app. With that in mind, Facebook is trying to make it follow the footsteps of Messenger which already became a big app on its own.
This is just another example of what seems to be a new method of operations for Facebook. In the past, Facebook would develop dozens of features and apps and see what actually got used. Things that never took off, like for example: Rooms and Slingshot, got trimmed away. Things that have the potential will stay.
Facebook's strategy involves shuffling users to the features it wants them to use. In short, Facebook continues to unbundle itself. One of the most prominent one was when Facebook removed Messenger integration from Facebook's core app, forcing users to use the standalone Messenger app.
With that purpose, Facebook has less to no reason to keep two similar feature at a single time, let alone maintaining them. The company simply didn't feel as though the feature was needed any longer.
Facebook kills Photo Sync in favor of Moments.
The move didn't affect the company's revenue by much because it's only giving a workaround to give a better experience by altering the way users use Facebook's feature. The company's stock was down by 0.91 percent or $0.88 following the news, hitting at $96.45 per share. With approximately 21.52 million shares traded hands, Facebook's shares have risen 18.49 percent since June 5th, 2015.