September 17, 2014
Safe and small micro-sharing apps like Cluster have been adopted as a new way of sharing sensitive or more private information & content with a select group of people. In an attempt to compete in this space and allow its users to share information more selectively, Facebook is building a new app named ‘Moments’. The idea behind Moments is that it will ‘let people share to different subsets of their total friend list using a more visual design.’ The concept of this application is timely, with the need for segmentation of contacts rising in importance as the barriers for personal and professional use of social networks become increasingly blurred.
The traditional approach of separating social channels for personal and professional use, using Linkedin at work and Facebook at home, is changing. We are increasingly seeing ‘personal’ social networks play a part in affecting the buyer cycle in both the B2B and B2C worlds. Equally, the rise of emotional content being used across the professional sphere demonstrates a need to connect with ‘people’ rather than ‘professionals’.
With this in mind there is a necessity for people to be able to distinguish between these groups and share content only where it is relevant. You do not want your clients to see the latest pictures of your two-year old eating an ice cream and, equally, it is unlikely that your mates from the pub will be interested in the developer app that you are pushing to tech B2B buyers. Google plus have their circles, which sort of solves this issue and independent apps like Cluster also attempt to make this micro-sharing idea possible. There are, however, a couple of other caveats to Facebook releasing this app at the moment in time:
– They need to break the bad spell of failed and disappointing apps such as Paper and Slingshot
– It is another attempt to get people using ‘friends lists’, which Zuckerberg claimed only 5% of Facebook users were actually using
Let’s hope, not least for Zuckerberg’s sake, that Moments is actually something people want. But having said that, despite us knowing the app exist due to a leak, Facebook have rejected a chance to comment and the app may change beyond recognition or be abandoned before we get a chance to ascertain its relevance first hand.