Watch out Pocket and Instapaper. Facebook might be building its own method for saving articles and posts for later.

One of our team members noticed that a “Save” button was present on some of the content in his Facebook News Feed.

Here’s what we saw:

  • The “Save” button is present only on links, mostly for articles, although at least one link to a Twitter picture had it.
  • Facebook seems to be testing it out with various websites (BuzzFeed, Upworthy, Uproxx, etc.), but only all the BuzzFeed links had the button.
  • The button was present on links posted by his friends either on their own timelines or on content shared by one friend to another friend’s timeline.
  • No user-generated content (text posts, uploaded pictures, etc.) had the button.
  • On desktop, there is a section in the left-side menu where saved links can be found and shared with the standard “Share” button that has long been integrated.
  • On mobile, there is also a similar section to access saved links; swiping across a link reveals “Delete” and “Share” buttons.
  • The “Save” button does not currently appear in the Facebook Paper app (we’ve only checked iOS), only in the classic Facebook app.

Facebook appears to be quietly testing this, and the feature has not been rolled to all users.

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It’s also unclear whom exactly Facebook has partnered with (if anyone at all) and what that partnership looks like, given the inconsistency of the new button’s presence across different links.

However, this potential new feature does fit in nicely with all the news reader-type features and changes Facebook has been rolling out, including hashtags, the “Trending” section now on the right side on desktop, and the recently released Paper app.

Take a look at the screenshots we took of the feature.

 

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