Year: 2018

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook messages were retracted from the inboxes of some users, six sources told TechCrunch in April. Facebook quickly tried to normalize that breach of trust by claiming it would give everyone the ability to unsend messages in the coming months. We haven’t heard a word about it since, and Facebook told me it had nothing more to share here today.

Well Snap is stepping up. Snapchat will let you retract your risque, embarassing, or incriminating messages thanks to a new feature called Clear Chats that’s rolling out globally over the next few weeks.

Hold down on a text, image, video, memory, sticker, or audio note in a one-on-one or group chat Snapchat message thread and you’ll see a Delete button. Tap it, and Snapchat will try to retract the message, though it admits it won’t always work if the recipient lacks an internet connection or updated version of the app. The recipient will also be notified…something Facebook didn’t do in the case of Zuckerberg’s messages.

The Clear Chats feature could make people more comfortable sending sensitive information over Snapchat. The app already auto-deletes messages after they’re viewed unless a recipient chooses to screenshot or Save them, which their conversation partner can see. This could be especially useful for thwarting cases of revenge porn, where hackers or jilted ex-lovers expose someone’s nude images.

Unfortunately, the Clear Chats option could also be used to send then retract abusive messages, destroying the paper trail. Social media evidence is increasingly being used in divorce and custody battles, which an unsend feature might undermine…especially if Facebook goes through with rolling it out on its platform where messages are normally permanent. But right now, Snapchat’s priority is doing whatever it can to boost usage after hitting its slowest growth rate ever last quarter. If teens feel like Snapchat is a consequence-free place to message, whether or not that’s true, they might favor it over SMS and other social apps.

More Snapchat Spectacles And Ecommerce News

Snap made a few other announcements today. Spectacles v2, which are actually pretty great and I continue use, are now available for purchase through Amazon in the U.S., U.K, and Canada. The $150 photo- and video-recording sunglasses come to more European countries via Jeff Bezos soon, such as France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Amazon will sell Spectacles in three color combos: Onyx Moonlight, Sapphire Twilight, & Ruby Daybreak.

Until now, you could only buy v2 on Snap’s website. That’s because Snapchat’s eagerness to develop a bevy of sales channels made it very tough to forecast demand for its lackluster v1 Spectacles. They only sold 220,000. That led to hundreds of thousands of pairs gathering dust unsold in warehouses, and Snapchat taking an embarrassing $40 million write-off.

“We had an inventory challenge with v1” Snap’s VP of hardware Mike Randall told me in April. “We don’t think it was a product issue. It was an internal understanding our demand issue vs a planning issue. So we think by having a more simplistic channel strategy with v2 we can more thoughtfully manage demand with v2 vs v1.” Working with Amazon and its robust toolset should help Snap get Spectacles in front of more buyers without obscuring how many it should be manufacturing.

Still, the worst thing about Spectacles is Snapchat. The inability to dump footage directly to your phone’s camera roll, and the incompatibility of its round media format with other social networks means it’s tough to share your Spetacles content anywhere else while making it look good. Snap has experimented with a traditional landscape export format, but that hasn’t rolled out. Spetacles could strongly benefit from Snap partnering with fellow apps or open sourcing to let others show its circular always-full-screen format in all its glory.

Finally, Snapchat is launching a new ecommerce ad unit that shows a carousel of purchaseable items at the bottom of the screen that users can tap to buy without leaving the Snapchat app. This follows our prediction that Snap launching its own in-app merch store was really the foundation of a bigger ecommerce platform that’s now rolling out.

Merchants can use the Snap Pixel to measure how their ads lead to sales. The ability to shave down the ecommerce conversion funnel could get advertisers spending more on Snapchat when it could use the dollars. Last quarter it lost $385 million and missed its revenue target by $14 million.

Snapchat is also bringing its augmented reality advertisements to its self-serve ad buying tool. They’re sold on an effective CPM basis for $8 to $20 depending on targeting. Snapchat is also turning its new multiplayer game filters called Snappables into ads.

Overall, it’s good to see Snapchat iterating across its software, hardware, and business units. Plagued by executive departures, fierce competition from Facebook, a rough recent earnings report, and share price troubles, it’s easy to imagine the team getting distracted. The long-term roadmap is fuzzy. With Stories becoming more popular elsewhere, Spectacles sales not being enough to right the ship, and Instagram preparing to launch a long-form video hub that competes with Snapchat Discover, Snap needs to figure out its identity. Perhaps that will hinge on some flashy new feature that captures the imagination of the youth. But otherwise, it must lock in for a long-haul of efficient and methodical improvement. If it’s not growing, the best it can do is hold on to its core audience and squeeze as many dollars out of them as possible without looking desperate.

“Time Is on My Side” may be true for the Rolling Stones (seriously, Mick and the boys have defied time), but we’re here to tell you that time is most definitely not on your side if you want to compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2018, which takes place September 5-7.

You have a mere two days left before the application window to Startup Battlefield — and your shot at winning $100,000 — slams shut. Drop whatever you’re doing and apply to Startup Battlefield right now.

Startup Battlefield is one of the tech industry’s leading startup pitch competitions and, without a doubt, it’s the best launching pad for early-stage startups. If you want to introduce your pre-Series A company to the world, attract investor interest and receive intense media coverage, Startup Battlefield delivers the goods.

True fact. Even if you don’t win, merely competing in Startup Battlefield can have a profound effect on your business. Don’t just take our word for it. Consider Riminder, an AI-based recruitment service, that participated in Disrupt NY 2017 but did not make the final cut. Don’t shed any tears, because the company just received a round of funding totaling $2.3 million.

The Startup Battlefield vetting process is highly competitive. Our discerning team of editors reviews each application and accepts between 15-30 startups to compete in the first round. The acceptance rate ranges from three to six percent.

The Startup Battlefield takes place live in front of an audience of thousands, including the aforementioned investors and media. It’s your time to shine. Don’t worry though, each team receives expert pitch coaching from seasoned TechCrunch editors. You’ll be ready to step onto the Disrupt Main Stage and knock the socks off our panel of judges, which consists of notable tech and VC industry experts.

Those judges will select approximately five teams to move to the finals and a second round of pitching. From that select cohort comes the grand-prize winner to claim bragging rights, the Disrupt cup and, yes, our biggest equity-free cash award ever: $100,000. Someone has to win the $100,000 prize, and it might very well be your company.

Let’s take a minute to talk about other benefits of competing in Startup Battlefield. Applying and participating doesn’t cost you a thing, and each team gets to exhibit in Startup Alley for all three days of the conference — for free. The Alley’s where you’ll join more than 1,200 early-stage startups showcasing their very best tech, products and talent. It’s one of the most inspiring networking opportunities going.

Compete in the Battlefield, and you also join the Startup Battlefield alumni community — which consists of more than 800 companies and has collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. That’s another magical networking community. You might recognize a few names, like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place on September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. You have 48 hours left to apply. You are not Mick Jagger. Time is not on your side. Apply to Startup Battlefield today.

Bozoma Saint John has left Uber for entertainment company Endeavor, Recode first reported. Saint John’s employment at Uber came in the midst of the company’s scandals around sexual harassment, management issues and toxic culture.

“I want to thank Boz for her contributions over the last year,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. “Boz joined Uber at a time when the company was hurting—but her energy, optimism and creativity have been a key part of our ongoing turnaround. Endeavor is lucky to have her, and I’m excited to watch her work in her new role.”

Before joining Uber, Saint John made a name for herself at Apple, where she led the company’s global consumer marketing division for Apple Music and iTunes. Saint John joined Beats Electronics only a few months before Apple bought the company for $3 billion.

Before that, she spent several years at PepsiCo doing music and entertainment marketing. But it wasn’t until Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2016 when the masses began to understand her talent. At Endeavor, Saint John will serve as chief marketing officer.

“Boz’s strong creative vision has the power to create cultural moments that are transformative for brands,” said Endeavor CEO Ariel Emanuel said in a statement. “We’re excited for what it means when her vision comes face-to-face with our client roster and portfolio of brands who are shaping the cultural conversation around the world every day.”

Well, Square Enix just wrapped up a short and uneventful E3 press conference that really seemed to phone it in. No Final Fantasy VII remake details and nothing on The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy. 

The hyped presentation did have plenty to share on a new Tomb Raider title, to which they devoted about seven minutes of their half-hour presser. They also spent a lot of time with close-ups of the tornadoes that will be blaring around in Just Cause 4, which is getting a December release date. The extreme weather looks pretty cool, actually, and, given that a lot of the Just Cause series seems to be about just finding the limits of weird stuff you can do with the game’s wonky physics, this seems like it’d be pretty clutch.

Outside of that, there was a sneak peek at a new title called The Quiet Man, which at first glance seems to be a title devoted to a deaf man punching Hispanic dudes in alleys throughout New York. Babylon’s Fall is also new. Additionally we saw the Kingdom Hearts III trailer we saw at the Microsoft event yesterday, along with a deeper look into Captain Spirit, which looks cute, but I find it difficult to get super excited about.

Other trailered games included Nier: Automata: Become As Gods, Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest XI, Under the Moonlight, Monster Hunter World and Stormblood. 

(Skip ahead like eight minutes into the stream recording to get to the trailers.)

Gamers had lofty hopes, but they were all dashed against the stone by the presser’s end as evidenced by this quick live YouTube comments screenshot. Nobody was forcing them to host a press conference, but when you hold one, people naturally have expectations.

Facebook may have disbanded its “Trending” news section, but the social network is not abandoning its media company ambitions, despite whatever CEO Mark Zuckerberg said to Congress. In fact, the opposite of “not being a media business” is now occurring: Facebook is directly paying news publishers to create video, even as it claims its focus is on you and your “time well spent” on its site.

Sorry, Facebook, but you can no longer claim you’re just a platform, just a technology enabler, when you are directly funding journalism.

And you can’t claim you care about our time when you’re funding all these new videos meant to draw us in daily and keep us watching.

Facebook funds the news

It was recently announced that Facebook will roll out a series of news video shows from select partners, including TV news organizations CNN, ABC News, Fox News Channel and Univision, along with local news publisher Advance Local, and digital companies ATTN: and Mic. The shows will include a mix of live and breaking news as well as longer-form series and features.

The shows are being funded by Facebook for at least one year’s time, though the (undisclosed) terms will vary by network.

Even though publishers have had the rug pulled out from underneath them before — when, suddenly, Facebook decided it was time to focus on “quality time” on its network, and decreased publisher content in the News Feed as a result — they seem happy to create content for Facebook yet again.

I know, it’s baffling.

In addition, it’s building out a game-streaming competitor to battle Amazon’s Twitch and Google’s YouTube.

But what’s even worse is that Facebook continues to claim some sort of “we’re just a platform” sentiment — and one that cares about users’ time, no less! — even as it pursues these initiatives.

Time well spent… watching our news and videos

The move to fund news videos not only invalidates Facebook’s claims on the “just a tech platform” front, it calls into question how serious the company is about its “time well spent” focus.

This newer set of product development guidelines aims to increase the visibility of personal content at the expense of publishers and other junk.

The company is not alone in thinking about time well spent, even if it doesn’t understand what it’s doing about it.

Amid a growing backlash about the evils of technology addiction on our brain, emotional and social development and quality of life, other tech companies, including both Apple and Google, have now announced notable new efforts to regain control over our phones’ ability to interrupt, stress and addict. Both are rolling out new digital wellness tools in their next mobile operating system updates that will allow users to monitor and control their phone and app usage like never before.

Facebook, to some extent, has been attempting to participate in this movement as well, even as Apple in particular targets it as one of the apps we should all cut down on.

To its credit, Facebook reduced publisher content on the News Feed and the presence of viral videos, and saw its daily active users decline as a result.

Today, its latest “time well spent”-associated feature is arriving: “Memories,” a section where you can fondly look back on all the personal sharing and connections Facebook has enabled, and celebrate those moments with family and friends. (To be clear, Facebook is not calling Memories a part of “time well spent,” we are.)

The feature aims to remind users that the social network is truly about your personal connections, not the browsing of third-party content. It ties into Facebook’s larger self-image: The company still likes to envision itself, ever optimistically, as a force for good in the world. A platform that brings people together.

Yes, the platform used for Russian election meddling in the U.S. Yes, the one where millions of users had their data misappropriated through lax data handling policies. Yes, the one that contributes to genocide.

But look, have some old birthday party pictures! We care about you! 

If ‘connecting people’ was the goal, Facebook would look a lot different

Look, there’s nothing wrong with Facebook pushing users to revisit their memories with family and friends, and many will even appreciate Facebook’s Memories feature and find joy in using it.

But it’s increasingly hard to take Facebook seriously when it claims “connecting people” and “quality time” are its larger goals while it puts its money elsewhere.

To date, Facebook has squandered so many opportunities to innovate on its platform around the subject of personal sharing, and has instead largely turned into a cloning machine where it adopts the innovations of others.

Really, what has it done lately that’s not a copy of Instagram copying Snapchat?

Even Apple now has a better Photos product than Facebook. Apple’s is infused with AI smarts and automatic sharing prompts in iOS 12, while Facebook is still figuring out where to stick its Stories module.

And why can’t Facebook users easily search back through their memories and photos, in the robust machine learning-infused ways that Apple and Google can?

Facebook can’t find old photos from the search bar

Google can with ease

Really, why hasn’t Facebook — at least more recently — built us anything useful with the data we provided?

After all those check-ins and posts about which books we’re reading or what we’re watching on TV, all we get are more targeted ads.

If the company cared about connecting us with our friends, it could have built dozens of features on the back of this data by now:

• Robust search features that turned our shared data into our own private, personal search engines
• What to watch recommendations and reminders for our favorite streaming services
• TV Time-like tools for tracking our binges and meeting fellow fans
• Book clubs based on what your friends are reading
• Notifications about restaurant openings nearby based on where you’ve eaten before
• Collaborative photo albums (yes, it tried this through its Moments app, which spiked in popularity, but instead of doubling down on the app it’s allowed Google Photos to dominate and Apple to catch up with AI features and iCloud advancements)
• Personalized travel guides (another experiment that died)
• Private family groups that offered things like digitization services for sharing photos from old albums (it could have partnered with third parties on this), grandma’s recipes, private updates, family histories and more, instead of pointing families to its general-purpose “groups” product, which isn’t built with the specific needs of families in mind

I mean, these are just a few off the top of my head. I’m sure you can think of a dozen more.

Instead we’ve got Facebook launching some round-up of old personal sharing features (and remember it stole On This Day from Timehop) and investing heavily in everything video by funding news and cloning Twitch — both of which aim to suck up your time.

I know, I know — it’s too late for Facebook to go back to being a just a social network.

It would require a radical revamp of what Facebook is and does. It would have to remove publisher content, destroy its video business and completely arrest the viral spread of news — fake and otherwise — by restricting URL-laden posts from being viewable by anyone but your friends or the Facebook Groups with which they were shared.

Facebook can’t do this. It won’t do this. Facebook wants to survive.

So instead, let’s just insist Facebook be honest about itself: Yes, we’re a media company AND a tech platform AND a video network AND a social network.

Anything claiming otherwise is a lie.

Square, the payments company led by Jack Dorsey, has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving its on-demand food delivery service, Caviar . Today, customers who ordered food from Caviar between January 20, 2012 and August 31, 2015 received a notice of the proposed class-action settlement.

As part of the settlement, which TechCrunch has reviewed, plaintiff Spencer Janssen’s counsel is expected to seek up to $755,000 in fees and costs. Janssen himself is seeking up to $10,000, which means the remaining $1.44 million will be divvied up among other class members, who can use the money to put toward another Caviar order. The parties agreed there were 93,914 class members, so that comes out to about $15.28 per person. The court will make its decision to approve or deny the settlement on September 21, 2018.

The lawsuit claimed Square collected gratuities from customers but didn’t pass on that money to the delivery drivers. Square disputes those claims, and also points to the fact that “each driver knew in advance the amount he or she would be paid under his or her contract for each order before accepting and making that delivery,” Square’s attorney wrote in a court filing.

“We have always properly compensated delivery couriers, and discontinued this practice long ago to provide better transparency around costs,” a Square spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We have chosen to settle this matter to avoid the cost and distraction of litigation and provide direct benefit to our valued customers.”

In the agreed-upon settlement, it’s reiterated that Square denies all the allegations “and took the position that the use of the term ‘gratuity’ was neither misleading to reasonable consumers nor unlawful. Defendant contended that the amounts collected as gratuities from Plaintiff were paid to his independent contractor couriers.”

I’ve reached out to Square and will update this story if I hear back. In the meantime, here’s the original complaint:

Spencer Janssen v Square by Megan Dickey on Scribd

At CES in January I was pleasantly surprised by the LifeDoor, a smart home gadget that’s actually worth having. These little boxes automatically close doors when smoke detectors go off, inhibiting the spread of fire and smoke. The company is heading to KickStarter to fund the production version of the device, which has several improvements over the prototype I saw.

The simplicity and practicality of the device made it a standout at a show flooded with useless junk; the small team essentially made a gadget that automatically does what firefighters all insist you do: close the door in case of fire. That can be hard to remember to do or enforce, but the LifeDoor makes it so you don’t have to do either.

Installation, on any standard door hinge, shouldn’t take longer than a minute or two. It doesn’t detect smoke or heat, but rather lets your smoke detectors and other gadgets do that — instead, it listens for the beep when smoke is detected, and quickly (but gently) shuts the door against the threat. It’ll then light up and sound its own alarm in case you didn’t hear the first or the door muted the noise.

The version I saw was fully working, but was 3D printed and the team was still making improvements. The production device is only about two thirds the size of the prototype, which wasn’t too big to begin with. The new enclosure should help with detecting alarm signals as well. The microphone subsystem also will now sit idle unless it hears something, saving power and allowing the LifeDoor to go for up to two years on one battery.

Right now they’re looking to raise $50K on Kickstarter — they’re going for a little under $100 each as perks. My guess is all the backers so far are firefighters. I can say honestly that if I had an actual house I would buy a couple of these things in a second. I’ll leave myself open to accusations of shilling here because unlike most smart home knick-knacks, this one is more than useful — it could save lives.

Prøhbtd, a startup that CEO Drake Sutton-Shearer said is designed to “build a bridge” between the cannabis industry and mainstream culture, is announcing that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding.

It’s not the only cannabis -focused digital media company out there – for example, I wrote about the initial funding for Herb last year. But Sutton-Shearer argued that Prøhbtd is creating premium content with a unique voice.

For one thing, he said Prøhbtd’s isn’t focused exclusively on cannabis. Instead, the goal is to create a diverse slate of lifestyle- and culture-related content, with cannabis as the hook.

Take, for example, Edibles, a video series hosted by Birdie Harrelson (niece of Woody Harrelson) — the series includes recipes for creating cannabis-infused baked goods, but as Sutton-Shearer put it, when each episode opens, “She’s not talking about weed, she’s going to bakeries.”

The company says that its video content (which is available on both the Prøhbtd website and on devices like Apple TV and Roku) saw 21 million views in May, with an average view time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds.

Sutton-Shearer said one of his priorities is forging “mainstream partnerships” like Prøhbtd’s deal with Advertising Week. The company also works with more than 60 cannabis brands — not just on branded videos and sponsorships, but more broadly on product development, design and marketing.

Asked whether this creates a potential conflict with the editorial side of the business, Sutton-Shearer pointed out that plenty of other digital media companies (like BuzzFeed and Vice) run their own branded content studios.

“Today’s younger consumer, I don’t think they really care that much whether something’s branded or not,” he said. “They do want to know if it’s entertaining and thoughtful.”

Prøhbtd had previously raised $4 million in seed funding from investors including actor/musician Donald Glover. The new round was led by Serruya Private Equity, The Delavaco Group and Cresco Capital.

“We’ve seen every media opportunity in the cannabis industry but none of them compare to what the team at PRØHBTD has built,” said Serruya Private Equity’s Aaron Serruya in the funding announcement. “We expect great things from the company and we’re excited to support the team’s global vision.”

Speaking of that vision, Sutton-Shearer said Prøhbtd is exploring international opportunities, including in Canada, Australia and Latin America — In fact, the company says it has plans for a Canadian public offering.

“We’re very strategically looking at the rest of the world, but there’s still a lot to be done in the U.S.,” Sutton-Shearer said.

Last week TechCrunch reported Instagram will launch a long-form video hub to compete with a tentative June 20th launch date. Now Instagram is asking reporters to RSVP for a June 20th “special event”, confirming our scoop’s date. The invitation simply reads “Instagram has some news to share, and we want you to be the first to hear about it.” This is Instagram’s chance to evolve from social media to just ‘media’, stealing longer mobile viewing sessions away from YouTube and Snapchat Discover. 

Here are the details of long-form video hub that we’ve heard from our sources:

• Format: Instagram will let creators upload 4K, full-screen, vertically oriented videos ranging much longer than the current 60 second limit on videos.
• Destination: The videos will be available from a centralized hub featuring curating sections of popular videos and an option to continue watching clips you’ve already started, though it’s unclear where in its app or a separate Instagram will host this destination.
• Launch Partners: Instagram has been meeting with social media stars and content houses to establish launch partners for the June 20th reveal.

• Mid-Level Quality: The content is meant to approximate the clips you see on YouTube from star creators, shot with forethought and nice cameras, but most of it won’t be at the Netflix Originals or HBO-quality.
• Link-Outs: Instagram will let creators add a link that can visited by swiping up on the video so they can drive traffic to their other social presences, ecommerce stores, or websites.
• Monetization: Instagram plans to let creators earn money off their long videos, though it hasn’t finalized how yet. That couldtake the form of pre-roll ads or mid-break commercials, with creators potentially earning a revenue share.

It’s also quite possible that Instagram will announce that it’s hit 1 billion users, which would be a great way to draw content creators. Instagram hit 600 million in December 2016, 700 million in April 2017, and 800 million in September 2017. If it’s adding 100 million users every four months or so, that means it should have reached 1 billion by the June 20th event.

Instagram has the opportunity to settle into a sweet spot between YouTube and Snapchat Discover. YouTube offers incredible breadth of content, but it’s so packed with amateurish videos that it can be tough to find the gems. With algorithmic, personalized curation and a narrower set of sources, Instagram could raise the likelihood that you’ll like what you’re shown. That could encourage users to fill a 7-minute Uber ride or 30-minute commute with Instagram’s long-form video rather than aimlessly wandering the web.

Snapchat has focused on heavy-handed curation for Discover, only working with chosen partners. But that means it can be tough to find something to watch that really resonates. The recent redesign drowns polished Discover video in rivers of friends’ Stories and semi-pro creators. And Snapchat has just 191 million daily users compared to the 500 million-plus Instagram has. That reach could lure in creators who want to build their brand and audience, as well as earn money from their content.

This is all what Facebook was hoping to do with Facebook Watch, but that original video hub was filled with third-rate reality shows and documentaries that haven’t piqued the interest of the younger crowd. Facebook is a ubiquitious utility, but it’s certainly not cool any more. It’s NBC. Here, Instagram has a chance to be the second coming of MTV.

Check back on June 20th at 9am pacific for our coverage of the Instagram event, and read our full scoop on what’s coming here:

Facebook today is introducing a dedicated page called “Memories,” where you can reflect on the moments you’ve shared with family and friends over the years. The page is essentially an expanded collection of familiar Facebook features, like “On This Day,” which lets you look back on this date last year and the years prior, as well as other memory recaps and memories you’ve shared with friends.

The content found on the Memories page isn’t necessarily new, it just now has its own section on Facebook so you can more easily find it at any time.

Among the other options you’ll see here is the “Friends Made on this Day” feature, which includes a list of friends you made on this same day in the past. You’ll also see special videos and collages to celebrate your “friendversaries” – the term Facebook coined for celebrating the day you and someone became Facebook friends.

You’ve likely seen these video collages pop up in your News Feed before with their collections of shared photos set to upbeat music.

Also on this page are “Memories You May Have Missed,” for those who don’t log in often enough to see these sharing suggestions in their Feed, and”Recaps of Memories” – meaning those seasonal or monthly recaps that have been bundled into a short video or message ready for sharing.

The social network had first introduced these memory recaps just over a year ago, as a way to encourage more personal sharing on a network where organic sharing has been on the decline.

The company has tried a number of things to try to push more people to post their own messages and comment on friends’ updates  – like adding colored backgrounds for status updates and adding support for GIFs in comments, among other things.

It even bought a briefly popular teen messaging app tbh, to power a new “Did You Know” social questionnaire which outright asked Facebook users to share personal tidbits.

But these days, people aren’t sharing as much personal content on Facebook directly, as before when it was the only game in town.

Now users’ posts are spread around on other social media sites, like Snapchat and Instagram (luckily it owns this one too), as well as through private messaging channels – where Facebook also has a large stake through WhatsApp and Messenger.

Memories are also tied to Facebook’s focus on time-well-spent efforts, which aim to increase the focus on quality engagement on Facebook, even if time on site suffers as a result.

For what it’s worth, Facebook notes the Memories feature includes controls to adjust what content you want to see, as some memories are not always things you want to revisit.

“We know that memories are deeply personal — and they’re not all positive. We try to listen to feedback and design these features so that they’re thoughtful and offer people the right controls that are easy to access,” writes Facebook Product Manager, Oren Hod, in an announcement. “We work hard to ensure that we treat the content as part of each individual’s personal experience, and are thankful for the input people have shared with us over the past three years,” Hod said.

Memories will be available through the Memories bookmark either to the left of the News Feed on the desktop, in the “more” tab in the bottom right of the mobile app, through notifications and messages in the News Feed, and through Facebook.com/memories.