Spotted by The Next Web, Facebook is testing a new feature that would allow people to schedule a time for their posts to be scrubbed from their timeline. This “Choose Expiration” feature lets you choose a life expectancy from one hour up to seven days, based on user screenshots.
https://twitter.com/jenflitter/status/508916759957475328
Facebook has said they were testing the iOS feature as a “small pilot”, meaning your iPhone may or may not be a lucky guinea pig.
Experimentation with new features is commonplace at most — if not all — social media websites. Although this feature would bring in ephemerality to Facebook, the company already has its Snapchat competitor with Slingshot, so it makes sense they might want to toy with it in the main feed as well. Not to mention that self-destructing posts let people comment on newsier things without cluttering up your timeline long after the fact.
We’ll see if Facebook goes ahead with its experimental plans, but in the meantime could you see post expiration dates being useful? [The Next Web]