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Technology Advice for Small Businesses

Saving Facebook content to read later

Facebook_Aug18_ASince its release, Facebook has gone from a college-only network to international site that connects millions of people. With more than half of adult users having more than 200 friends on average, our News Feeds have become a highly congested and constantly changing collage of stories and posts. Many of these posts are links to articles that we find interesting. While we would love to drop everything and read a particular link there are times when this isn’t possible. To help, Facebook has introduced the new Save feature.

About the Save feature

The idea behind the Save feature is that it allows users to save longer-form content like articles posted on a News Feed. So, if someone has posted a link to an article on your favorite blog and you would like to read it later, you can now save it.

While this feature is similar to various apps like Pocket and Readability, which allow users to save content on the Web to read later, Facebook’s version goes a little deeper. In a blog article announcing the feature, the company noted that the Save feature allows users to, “Save items like links, places, movies, TV and music.”

Let’s say you are at work, and during your break you quickly check Facebook. You come across a post where your friends have shared a link to a restaurant’s Facebook Page. If you don’t have time to visit the page right at that moment you can save it to view later.

While this feature will prove useful for many users, it is worth noting that when you save content, e.g., an article, you will need to have an Internet connection to access it in the future. Knowing Facebook however, they may integrate a feature like this in the future.

How to save content for later

Facebook has integrated this feature into all versions of Facebook, including the mobile app and browser-based versions. You can save content and links by:

  1. Scrolling through your News Feed until you find an article, link, Place, etc. that you would like to save for later.
  2. Clicking on the downward facing grey arrow at the top-right of the post.
  3. Selecting Save ‘content name’. Note: The name will be based on the name of the link in the post.

Accessing your saved content

If you are looking at Facebook in your browser, then you should see a tab called Saved show up in the upper part (the area just below your profile image) of the left-hand vertical bar of the page. For users who access Facebook via the mobile app, press the three horizontal bars at the top-right of the app (located just below the magnifying glass) and you should see a section called Saved under Favorites.

When you click on Saved you should see a new screen open with the content you have saved. It will be divided into different types including:

  • All
  • Links
  • Places
  • Music
  • Books

You can interact with each item by either:

  • Tapping on it – This will open the page, link, or content.
  • Sliding it to the left – This will allow you to archive the content or press More to review, share or Like the content.

If you are looking to learn more about the Save feature, or Facebook in general and how it can be used effectively in your business, contact us today.