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New Facebook Feature Lets You “Save” Stuff -- On Facebook

Remember when you used to “bookmark” things on the Web? This is like that. Exactly like that, really.

Peter Kafka
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

So you’re on Facebook, skimming pictures of your friends’ kids* and clicking on viral content built specifically to be skimmed on Facebook, and you find something you’d actually like to see again. How can you do that?

It seems odd that Facebook hasn’t offered a solution for this one before, but now they have: The social network will let its billion-plus users “save” stuff — links, pictures, whatever — they find on Facebook, so they can find it later.

If you’re the kind of person who immediately starts thinking about what this means for digital stuff-saving services like Pocket, Instapaper, Evernote and Apple’s “Reading List” feature, I can save you some brain cells: This doesn’t let you “save” stuff offline, or even out of Facebook. The only way you can retrieve stuff you’ve “saved” is when you’re using Facebook and connected to the Web.

In other words: You know how people used to “bookmark” stuff on their Web browsers? This is like that. But on Facebook.

That’s it! On with your day.

* And, increasingly, watching autoplay videos of your friends’ kids, as Facebook ramps up its video efforts.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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