Snapchat 'Memories' is something Facebook won't soon forget
Facebook is a social network that I use begrudgingly, but it sometimes does have value in my life. For instance, its "Memories" feature periodically shows me photos from the past on their anniversary of being uploaded. Sometimes a now-deceased relative pops up and it feels like a "hello" from heaven. It's a killer feature.
Unfortunately for Mark Zuckerberg and company, rival attention-thief Snapchat seems to be borrowing this feature a bit. Also called "Memories", it too aims to leverage photos -- plus videos -- as memories, but in a more robust way. Will millennial users want such a thing?
"Memories is a new way to save Snaps and Stories on Snapchat. It's a personal collection of your favorite moments that lives below the Camera screen. Just swipe up from the Camera to open Memories! It's super easy to find the Snap or Story you're looking for in just a few seconds by typing keywords like 'dog' or 'Hawaii' -- that way you can spend less time searching and more time enjoying your Memories", says Snapchat.
The company further says, "you can use Memories to create new Stories from Snaps you’ve taken, or even combine different Stories into a longer narrative! It’s fun to celebrate an anniversary or birthday by finding a few old Snaps and stringing them together into a new Story. We’ve also created a new way to send Snaps from Memories to your friends, or even post them to your Story. If you post a Snap you took more than a day ago to your Story, it will appear with a frame around it so that everyone knows it’s from the past".
If you are worried about privacy, don't be -- Snapchat has added a 'My Eyes Only' feature, so you can prevent embarrassing Snaps -- such as the butt-slap in the above demo video -- from being seen by others. While it is always possible to forget to flag some images this way, the onus falls on the user.
With that said, the feature seems to be strange given the initial intent of the app -- self-destructing images. It remains to be seen if millennials are truly interested in remembering, categorizing, and aggregating Snaps. Quite frankly, I bet many users would prefer to forget such images.
Heck, I know I want to forget the horrific Ouya that Facebook reminded me of this morning!
Sometimes @facebook memories show you something you just *really* want to forget. The horror... The horror... pic.twitter.com/apX1sWpw6H
— Brian Fagioli (@brianfagioli) July 6, 2016
Will Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook be angry at Snapchat over the borrowed "Memories" functionality? Tell me in the comments.
Photo credit: Lakeview Images / Shutterstock