Facebook wants its users spending even more time in its mobile app.
The company announced the addition of a feature that makes it easier for users of its iPhone app to find and share links.
Using the same search bar that they can use to find friends and events, users can search for articles, videos and other online content using keywords. Once Facebook produces a list of links, the user can view and share them directly from the app.
Alongside the announcement, Facebook shared a blog post that goes in-depth into the development of the feature. It’s an interesting read for those that want to learn more about software creation. Towards the start of the post, however, Facebook details how one of its product managers decided to start working on the feature.
“In January, Rousseau Kazi, a product manager who works on search, was frustrated again by how hard it was to share a link on his iPhone,” says the post. “He had to leave Facebook, open a browser, go to a web search engine, enter keywords, scroll to the result, open it, copy the URL, go back to Facebook, paste the URL, and then — at long last — post and share the link. It’s exhausting just writing that!”
No word on when this feature will make its way to Android, but given that it helps keep people inside of the company’s app, Facebook is sure to roll it out to that platform in short order.
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