The social titan Facebook introduces Moments. Coming from its Creative Labs, the app is Facebook's solution for its users to better share photos, privately.
Mobile devices is nevertheless expanding its wings. With mobile gadgets in almost everyone's hands and pockets, the smart devices that are owned by Facebook users are contributing to the high number of photos taken each and every second.
"With a phone at everyone’s fingertips, the moments in our lives are captured by a new kind of photographer: our friends. It’s hard to get the photos your friends have taken of you, and everyone always insists on taking that same group shot with multiple phones to ensure they get a copy. Even if you do end up getting some of your friends’ photos, it’s difficult to keep them all organized in one place on your phone," said Facebook's Product Manager Will Ruben announcing Moments in his June 15th, 2015 blog post.
The standalone app is Facebook's way to make this thing easier. Using the app, users can share photos privately, and give photos to friends and get photos he/she didn't take. The Moments app groups photos on a mobile device based on when they're taken. And by using facial recognition technology, the app can also group photos by friends.
With the photos organized, Moments also allows users to search and sort them.
Users can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends. If the friend also wants to sync their photos, both person will have the photos they took together.
Initially meant for just photos, Facebook Moments can also automatically create a video slideshow of shared photos that users can customize, personalize and share back to Facebook. Moments will automatically create a music video for any grouping of six or more photos. The user can then tap on the video to customize it further by changing the included photos and selecting from about a dozen different background music options.
One more tap and the video can be posted directly to Facebook.
The updates makes Moments more competitive with similar services such as Flipagram, or those that can automatically create animations.
Privacy Verdict
In the fast-moving digital age where almost every mobile devices are connected to the internet, privacy breach is one serious matter. Facebook is aware of this. The Gallery or photo rolls on a mobile device should be a well-guarded place where unwanted eyes should never venture. When photos are saved elsewhere, things can go from bad to worse.
Moments that highlights privacy, clearly labels two catalogs for its users (Private and Synced). Every photos that are taken starts in the Private bucket. When the user wants to share the photos, the app then ask the user whether he/she want to share the said photos with the person Facebook has analyzed and determine were with. Then the user can toggle the photos from the generated gallery.
Moments in short, is a well-made combination of a photo storage, getting the photos you didn't take and auto-syncing meets private sharing.
Moments is powerful to be a standalone app, just like Facebook wanted. With its facial recognition ability, some people have found that the technology is somehow creepy. Especially when because it's coming from Facebook that houses more people if compared to almost any other services similar.
Facebook's increasingly powerful face recognition technology can correctly identify a friend in a photo and ask whether the user wants to tag them or not. Moments can search for very photo on your camera roll looking for people it recognizes. And if the user has the tag suggestions enabled on his/her account, friends will be able to tag and privately share photos of him/her with other friends using the app. Some users may want to opt out using Facebook's settings.
Will Ruben said that it was important for Moments to feel like a separate, private place for photo sharing - not a public scrapbook like Facebook. Because Facebook posts are shared with friends by default, Moments is a clever move by Facebook to leverage its disadvantage if compared to rivals Amazon, Apple, Google and Yahoo! who already have private photo achieve.