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Cape Town - Facebook on Tuesday announced the launch of its Moments application for South Africa.
The application allows people to create private galleries to share with selected people and the social network has engineered the app to reduce data cost.
"Moments gives people control over when they take the actions that use the most data. For example, we download thumbnail images of photos you have received and only request the higher-res versions when you open them in the photo viewer," Moments product manager Will Ruben told Fin24.
He said that the application which launched in June allows users to choose how to optimise their data bundle.
"You can decide when you sync photos, and if you'd like to wait until you have a Wi-Fi connection to do that, you can choose to take that action then. Since Moments is optimised for syncing speed, it doesn't upload the full-res version, but rather a high-res version around the same size as a photo you would upload to Facebook."
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Though the Moments app will run parallel to Facebook, it sports a number of features that makes it easy to share galleries with friends.
"Because Moments leverages the same facial recognition technology that's available on Facebook today, Moments lets you easily choose the right friends with whom to give and get photos, in a way that only Facebook can. Now you can effortlessly sync multiple photos with friends and the photos you didn't take," said Ruben.
A Pew Centre report found that in the US, 72% of online adults use Facebook, with 70% of those classified as "highly engaged" because they log on daily.
The social media website reported in July that its audience has grown to 1.49 billion users, dwarfing rivals Pinterest (31%) and Twitter (23%).
Ruben said that the lessons learnt from Moments would impact in future Facebook features.
"Moments is a Facebook Creative Labs app that we developed to solve a particular problem: making it easier to give and get photos from friends. What we learn from Moments can inform future iterations of the app as well as complement the work that goes into other Facebook products to solve related problems."
Watch this online video on how Moments works:
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