Over the years in social media, bookmarking has become more and more popular.  Pinterest uses a form of book marking to pin users favorite pictures, tips, and articles to a board of their choice.  These boards can then be accessed again and again for idea references, recipes, and other pins that the user previously liked.

For an even longer time, StumbleUpon has allowed users to “stumble” through thousands of pieces of neat Internet content and give a thumbs up to the content each likes best.  This content is then stored on the users profile and can be found there for future reference.  Now, Facebook is getting into the book marking game with a new Save for Later feature.

Especially after the Facebook algorithm change in March 2011 that altered how many friends Facebook users actually see updates from, Facebook doesn’t seem to overwhelm users with content quite as much services like Twitter do.  However, there may be times when a Facebook user sees something interesting in their news feed and doesn’t have time to read the information at that minute.  This is where the Save for Later feature will come in handy.

Save for Later allows Facebook users to add stories to a saved folder through an App for Facebook iOS and desktop.  When engaging with Facebook, users can save a story by simply holding down a finger over the feature, which will bring up a “Save” pop-up.  On the Facebook desktop version the Save option can be found next to the Share, Comment, and Like features.  Currently, a small percentage of users are able to try the Save for Later feature and if it’s successful, the ability could be rolled out to a wider audience.  While testing does not necessarily mean that the feature will become reality, it is still an interesting feature nonetheless.

In September 2011, Facebook made another change, which allowed Apps to showcase what friends were reading.  This was the case with Yahoo! articles and when friends read something, Yahoo! came up with a pop-up which asked permission to share the fact that they read the article with all of their Facebook friends.  This inevitably led to concerns about privacy and an uproar from some users that they didn’t want everything they did shared with their Facebook following.  Luckily, this is something that the Save for Later feature does not do.  Friends will not receive a notification when you save a story that they posted.

So, in the world of the constantly changing Facebook features, Save for Later appears to be the latest feature considered for possible roll out.  What do you think?  Would you use the Save for Later feature?  Could you see the Save for Later feature being really useful in your everyday interaction with Facebook?  I guess the testing environment will soon let us know if the Save for Later feature is something they are going to save for all of us to consider.

About Eric Wagner

Eric is a online marketer and search engine optimization specialist (SEO). In his free time, Eric enjoys exercise, motorcycles, technology, and spending time with family and friends. Connect with him on Google+

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