Facebook Developing Secret Private Sharing App Provisionally Known As Moments

Facebook is busy creating a slew of new apps at the moment to try to remain relevant and continue to compete in the mobile space. The latest is their new innovation: an anonymous sharing app to help users keep more things private while sharing them with others.

The app that is provisionally being called “Moments” but may release under a different moniker which will allow a user to anonymously share items without others being able to tell who did the sharing.

Privacy Trend Growing

This follows a new trend for apps that deliver greater levels of privacy when sharing content like photos, videos and more. Obscuring the content is another popular approach which was included in the recent launch of the iOS app, Yovo which we reviewed yesterday but there is no indication that Moments will include this feature.

Privacy Agreement Confusion

The issue with Facebook is that the changing nature of their privacy agreement has led many users to abandon or deeply question the ongoing use of their social media platform. Images shared to a limited group of friends can now be easily seen by people who are only “friends of friends”. We all know that people known as “friends” on the social media site are rarely that; usually they're barely acquaintances and as such shouldn't really be able to see personal content that's intended for a very select group.

The problem has become so bad that some users look to have more than one Facebook account and use the second account to severely limit who sees certain content. It is an uncomfortable workaround.

A screw up when selecting an image to upload, a quick mistake when selecting from a drop-down menu and that photo intended for true friends on Facebook could end up being able to be seen by a much larger group of people and then spread further out from there.

New Approach With Moments

The approach behind the new Moments app from Facebook is to allow users to select either groups or sub groups of people to share only certain content with. This more granular approach to the sharing of personal content would make it less likely that a mistake would be made which comes back to haunt the user later. Effectively separate groups could be created for sharing specific types of content with one for family members, another for close friends, etc. Hopefully such an approach would not then be overridden by more changes in the Facebook privacy policies that has irked many users.

The anonymous side of the app will add an extra layer of security protection with less accountability with photos from a bachelor party being shared with either the new bride to be or the in-laws at an unfortunate time. Many grooms will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief at that.

No news yet on a release date for the Moments app. But given the topical nature of this type of privacy protection and the numerous privacy apps suddenly starting to appear in app stores, it shouldn't be long now. Facebook CEO Zuckerberg commented earlier in the year that releasing standalone apps was a new focus for the company despite some early hickups so there is clearly more to come.