Facebook’s Moments app was launched last June, which is why it sounds vaguely familiar, but now we’re all being given an ultimatum: download the app before the hard deadline of July 7, or your synced photos will disappear. Most people forget they have an album of synced photos on Facebook, but if you still want these photos and don’t have them backed up, you might want to take action. The announcement has been working like magic. Moments recently appeared as the top free app in the App Store. But what’s the point? Why do we need to have a separate Moments app if we already have the Facebook app? According to the official site, Moments was made as a “quick, easy way to gather the photos you and friends take together.” The idea is to easily share photos in one place. Learn more below.So, you might’ve received this e-mail from Facebook informing you that your tens of thousands of photos (by photos, they mean privately synced photos) will be deleted if you don’t download the Moments app.
Downloading an app isn’t a big problem for most of us, unless we’re low on memory, because it’s usually a non-committal experience. Download an app and delete it if you don’t care much for it. Easy, right?
However, learning that your photos could be deleted is what makes this particular announcement so alarming, so you should probably do something about it.
Here’s a description from the official Moments app site.
Do you remember how frustrated everyone was when Facebook messenger was forced to download Messenger as a standalone app? Well, this is kind of the same idea. “Messaging is becoming increasingly important,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a live Q&A session about Messenger. “On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well, we think.” Similarly, with apps like Instagram and VSCO, photos are becoming increasingly important.
Scenario 1: For one, everyone in the group might take the same photo with ten different phones. Kind of pointless, right? But everyone wants to have the photo on their phone.
Scenario 2: One person, who is usually non-responsive, takes the photo with their phone (and the photo is never sent out). Pretty lame, right? These are the issues that Moments are hoping to help solve.
Here’s a few friends hanging out and snapping photos. The photos are added to your Camera Roll or album, and if you have the Moments app, they’re automatically synced there.
All the photos need to be approved by you first. You can filter out the ones you don’t want to sync with friends, if at all.
The photos are grouped based on who you’re with and when the photos were taken. You can then choose which photos to sync with friends, and you can always add more photos to a specific moment.
This isn’t to say that the recognition process is flawless.
You can also ask for photos from friends that have the app.
That’s an option too. Just go to your Facebook profile, click Photos, and click download your synced photos (highlighted in blue) before the deadline. That way, you’ll still have your photos without the app. Facebook told you and now we are: this album will disappear on July 7.
**Check out the video below, or better yet, test it out yourself by downloading it on your phone.**