If you have followed Facebook’s improvements over the last couple years, you will notice a distinctive trend:

expiration

Choose how long you want your post to be visible.

Facebook takes successful techniques on other social networks and integrates them into their site. 

As I have previously written about on InfoSpace, Facebook has integrated trending topics, hashtags, and verified pages for celebrities and important public figures. Those three improvements from Facebook all come from Twitter, but Facebook has also created the Slingshot application which is more or less a replica of Snapchat…And now?

Facebook is now testing disappearing posts. Just like Snapchat, where you have a certain amount of time to look at a friends photo or video, disappearing posts would allow users to set a an expiration on statuses. The rollout has apparently hit some mobile devices. Users can choose from expiration times in the photo to the right.

Will expiring statuses be useful?

I understand why Facebook would be rolling this new update. For one, we all have seen how popular Snapchat has become with disappearing photos and videos and maybe Facebook feels like this will have a similar effect with posts. Additionally, it could be helpful for timely posts. For example, if you need something in the coming days like an extra ticket for a concert that is in 2 day it would helpful to have the status expire in 2 days because after the concert the status is irrelevant. 

a hand using an eraser on the Facebook logo

Image via innov8tiv.com

Wasn’t the implementation of the Newsfeed supposed to fix this problem?

Although I understand why Facebook is rolling out this new update, I personally do not think it is necessary. Users Facebook newsfeeds are constantly changing information with the most recent posts. If we take a look at my example about the concert tickets, come the day of the concert the post is not even going to be relevant on anyone’s newsfeed. For this reason, I am not sure that the expiration of posts is that important. On Facebook, the time that elapses after you post a status is its own expiration date.

On the other hand, if you post a status that is not really suitable for Facebook and you put an expiration on it, eventually it will be off of your timeline and your friends news feeds. However, when it comes to the internet, is anything really permanently deleted?

What do you think about disappearing posts? Tweet me @ceek22 or leave a comment below.