Facebook pretty much abandoned its push into stand-alone apps at the end of last year by closing its Creative Labs division. One app that didn’t get relegated to the cutting block, however, was Moments.
As it turns out, the photo-sharing app is actually quite popular. Moments’ users have shared more than 400 million photos since its launch last year. To celebrate that milestone, Facebook has launched a major update to the app, which now lets you share videos alongside images.
For those who aren’t familiar with Moments, the app is built for private photo sharing. Using AI, it identifies who’s in your images and when they were taken, allowing it to suggest who you should then share your photos with. Once you send a photo to someone, they will be notified via Facebook and Messenger, allowing them to log in to Moments and contribute their own images from the same event. With the new update (available right now for iOS and Android) you can also upload videos to those collections.
Additionally, Facebook claims that you’ll soon be able to add videos to your shareable slideshows in Moments — these are the short videos set to music that can be created using a selection of images — which can then be shared via Facebook, reports TechCrunch.
A major part of Moments’ success can be attributed to Facebook’s heavy marketing of the app. The likes of Slingshot and Riff failed due to the social network’s insistence on an organic strategy for its standalone products, which was reliant upon positive word-of-mouth. Its unorthodox treatment of Moments, on the other hand, has included promotion on the Facebook news feed, and via Messenger (as described above). The social network also recently made its handy photo-sync feature a Moments exclusive, further driving mobile users to the app.
