Facebook has updated its iPhone app to make it easier for users to share web links without opening a browser. Dubbed as “add a link”, the feature lets people find and share links within the app.
Users can now search for external content in-app by selecting a small link icon that appears alongside the Tag Friends button. Tapping that brings up a new screen where you can do a keyword search for links. This will save the tedious task for users to open a Web browser and copy and paste a link on a mobile phone. Facebook has revealed that it has over a trillion posts of shared links.
We think this feature makes it much simpler to share web links with your friends on mobile, whether it’s an interesting news article, a funny video, or a favorite recipe. Here’s the story of how it moved rapidly from insight to launch.
posted Facebook engineer Tom Whitnah in a company blog.
The latest move comes from Facebook as it wants to keep users on its platform as long as possible. It also builds on Facebook’s Graph Search that takes advantage of all the data Facebook has accumulated over the years and offers users an advanced way to search for people, places and things. Just yesterday, Facebook opened up Messenger to users who do not have an account with the social network.