Facebook is incorporating the concept often used by messaging apps in to its social networking site where users can schedule the automatic deletion of posts in advance.
The integration of self-destructing messages in a private chat application is much wanted feature by those who prioritize data security. Facebook is taking the ephemeral concept to a new level by integrating a self-destruction feature into its open statuses. The world's largest social networking site confirmed testing the new feature on select iOS devices, which allows users to schedule deletion of posts in advance, The Next Web reports.
Some users started reporting the new feature on their iOS devices earlier this week before Facebook confirmed that it is indeed carrying out a pilot test. Users also tweeted screen grabs of the new feature that shows various status expiration options, ranging between 1 hour and 7 days.
New #Facebook feature. Post expiration dates?! Spotted this tonight: pic.twitter.com/Sv98D6qI7I
— Jen Flitter (@jenflitter) September 8, 2014
"We're running a small pilot of a feature on Facebook for iOS that lets people schedule deletion of their posts in advance," a company spokesperson told The Next Web, Wednesday.
But if users think the new test feature will bring any changes to the company's way of storing users' information, they must be mistaken. Like any manually deleted information, the ephemeral posts on Facebook will only be deleted from its servers and logs after 90 days.
However, the self-destructing posts have garnered a positive response from users so far, with comments stating the feature's worth in marketing campaigns for limited promotions, coupons, and saving the trouble of going back and forth on one's own timeline to delete any obsolete posts.
The new feature may not be available to all iPhone users but will only hit a wider audience on the success of its test batch. The company has constantly engaged in various test features to improve the site experience, but not all experiments are released to users. Earlier this week, the company began testing a new feature that shows the number of views on a particular video posted on the site and also a "related videos" feature for mobile users, PCMag reported.
