Moments, Facebook’s private photo sharing companion app, has shot to No. 1 on the App Store after Facebook sent out warnings it would delete photo albums backed up to Facebook via iOS, unless users switched over.
This announcement comes hot on the heels of Facebook announcing smartphone users can no longer use Facebook Messenger through the mobile web portal, instead redirecting users to Facebook’s Messenger app in the App Store.
iOS users who used Facebook's iOS photo syncing feature to back up their photos have until July 7, according to Techcrunch, to either download their photo albums to their desktop computers or move the online photo albums to the Moments app.
The Moments app itself isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world — its whole premise is to be an easy way of sharing pictures — but Facebook’s recent move to push mobile users toward adopting standalone companion apps isn’t proving popular with everyone.
While Facebook doesn’t have the best track record about keeping companion apps alive, they did recently announce support for 360-degree photos using the iOS camera app’s panorama feature. So it does seem like Facebook is serious about maintaining a major presence in the online picture market.
