Facebook got on the wrong side of the Great Internet Hive Mind recently with The Great “Psychological Experiment” Kerfluffle of 2014, but they’re determined to get us crawling back. After all, how can we read endless, pointless updates from extended relatives or find out which online quizzes our friends are taking if not on Facebook? To sweeten the status update pot, Facebook is currently testing new features: A “save for later” option a “buy” button attached directly to ads.
Oh. Joy.
The “save” feature—get ready for this, because it will blow your minds—will allow you to save a status update for later, upon which time it will go into a special “saved” section of your timeline. The feature is intended more for news articles you swear you’ll read later, really, than your Aunt Suzie posting Bible verses and getting into political slap-fights with old classmates, and as such it’s actually pretty practical, if extremely basic.
As for the second feature, Facebook announced on Thursday they’re “testing a new way for people to discover and buy projects on Facebook”—that way being a buy button “on ads and Page posts [that will enable users] to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook.”
The feature is currently being tested on “a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US,” and Facebook assures us that “none of the credit or debit card information people share with Facebook when completing a transaction will be shared with advertisers.” Which isn’t to say that if you shell out your hard-earned dough for a “GET SKINNY QUICK!” solution, Facebook won’t tell other advertisers what you bought, so they can better target you. Because who are we kidding? They probably will. This is Facebook. GIVE THEM YOUR DOLLARS, YOUR EYEBALLS, YOUR SOULS. HAIL ZUUL.
(via Jezebel, Gizmodo, picture by Peter Ruter)
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