While Facebook’s experimental Paper app supports read-later services like Pocket and Instapaper, its main iOS app never has. But now Facebook has rolled out a Saved Links feature that is essentially its own built-in read later service. It works for just about anything you can post to or create on Facebook, including links, event invitations, places, and more.
However, users and Page owners should be aware of what Saved Links can “see” if they want fans and followers to be able to save their articles for later.
For users
It’s pretty simple. When you find a post in Facebook for iOS (or on a traditional PC) that contains an article you don’t have time to read right now, tap the action menu in the upper right for the option to “Add this to your Saved Links.”
When you get some time to read, tap the More tab, then the new Saved section that should be somewhere under Favorites. Saved items are separated into the aforementioned categories—Links, Places, Music, Books, Events, and so on.
As far as I can tell, saving something to view later is not akin to liking or commenting on someone’s post, or liking an article you find on the web. This action does not post anything to your feed or friends, so it’s a relatively private feature by nature.
For people and Pages that post links
Saved Links supports many post and media types, but it doesn’t “see” links in posts unless they are actual link posts. Some people and Pages like to share links by adding a photo and pasting the link in with the text because photos generally get much better play on social media. If you care about Saved Links, I don’t recommend this.
You know when you paste a link into a post and it automatically generates a banner section with the headlines and image thumbnail (on iOS you might have to scroll down a little after pasting)? That’s a link post, and it’s the only kind that Saved Links can pick up on.
Whether Saved Links is important to you is up to you or your favorite social media blogs. At least it’s something to consider when crafting posts.