Facebook Releases Moments, Another Standalone App

Facebook wants to take up even more real estate on our smartphones. It says it also wants to help us share pictures privately with our friends.

The social-media company has officially announced Moments, a standalone app that groups photos on your phone based on when they were taken. Using facial-recognition technology, the app also can group pics based on which friends are in them. Facebook says Moments users can then "privately sync those photos with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well."

The facial-recognition tech is the same one that powers Facebook's tagging system on the main app, the company says.

Moments |Facebook | iTunes

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Facebook explains Moments thusly: "When you go to a wedding, for example, there are many people taking great photos throughout the day. You all want a quick way to share your photos with the friends who are in them, and get photos that you're in back. The same is true for smaller events too, like a kayak trip or a night out."

Neat. Here's the promo video:



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News about Moments first leaked back in September. Last August, the company launched a standalone messaging app appropriately called Facebook Messenger. That app essentially moved the messaging feature of Facebook's main app into its own, supposedly speedier app. By November, Facebook said Messenger had topped 500 million active monthly users.

With the main app, Messenger and now Moments, Facebook will be dominating the home screens of countless smartphones. At this rate, Facebook should just make its own smartphone. Oh, right, we've heard that rumor already...

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