Ever find yourself browsing your News Feed and realise that there’s just too much interesting content for you to keep up with?
No, us neither.
But! Every now and then it’s very possible you’ll be casually browsing and find a link to something that you really do want to read, just not while you’re on the toilet (admit it, we all check Facebook when we’re on the loo).
Everyone has their own solution to saving links they find on social media. The general upshot of most of them, however, is that the links get forgotten about, buried deep in the notes on your phone or saved as an obscure bookmark.
Facebook, in their infinite wisdom, have come up with a solution: a save function. You’ll be able to save not only links but most things your friends are posting about, whether it’s a new trendy bar or a film they’ve absolutely loved.
Everything you save gets organised by category and is going to be amazingly easy to re-share as well. You’re also going to get little reminders in your News Feed of the things you’ve saved.
Whilst a little bit basic – you can’t curate your own categories for example – it’s definitely adding a new dynamic to the way we engage with things on the social networking hub.
The save function announcement comes right on the heels of the announcement that Facebook will implement a ‘buy’ button as well.
The Facebook buy button will not be a silver bullet to turn your sales around overnight.
Facebook, predicted to net 21% of global mobile advertising revenue in 2014 is likely hoping to increase that number, turning advertising directly into impulse buys. From the marketing perspective, Phillip Smith from Trusted Shops urges caution:
“The buy button is obviously going to cost as it will be implemented through Facebook advertising campaigns. So should we be throwing our money into Facebook? I would say treat this exactly the same as you would any other paid advertising campaign: use it as part of a marketing mix (i.e PPC, Facebook, email, customer reviews…)
“The Facebook buy button will not be a silver bullet to turn your sales around overnight. Test with a small budget then scale it up if you see some fruit.”
There’s no doubt however that Facebook are banking on both ‘save’ and ‘buy’ to have an impact. Twitter, too, have been thinking of ways to build in a direct-from-tweet buy function and last week purchased CardSpring, a US start-up that lets app developers create ways to directly accept credit card payments.
Whilst the save function in Facebook brings it up to speed with Twitter’s Favourite button, it’s worth asking yourself how many things have you Favorited on Twitter that you really meant to read later but never did? Success there is likely to hinge on how prominently the things you’ve saved appear on your News Feed.
A simple way to make direct purchases is going to make both platforms even more appealing to advertisers. The race is on.
