Facebook launches voice posts, two other features from India

Facebook on Wednesday launched three new features, including allowing users to put up voice posts. This is the first time it is launching product updates from the Indian market.

Addressing the limited phone storage issues faced by most Indians, Facebook has added a feature that will allow users to save photos and videos for later.

People will now be able to save the photos and videos they capture through the Facebook camera, where only they can see them when they log into their Facebook account. It can also be used to save photos they might want to share later, so they don't have to edit or post them immediately.

This feature will initially be available only on Facebook for Android from today and the other two will be rolled out next month.

“It is common for people in India to share devices…people have told us they want to save their photos to a more personal space that is tied to their identity and not just the device they are using,” said Connor Hayes, Director of Product Management, Facebook.

Facebook will also allow voice posts, letting people “share in the moment” without having to share a photo or video. This could also help people who can't necessarily write in the language they want to share in.

“Another really important thing that we’ve learnt from WhatsApp is that voice messaging is an increasingly popular way for people to communicate when they don’t want to type out messages,” said Hayes.

Users will be able to put a background colour to audio posts or a background picture.

A voice post on stories can be up to 20 seconds. There is currently no limit for a voice post that is shared to News Feed, but the recording time is restricted by the local storage on the user's device.

Facebook did not provide statistics around the popularity of voice messaging in India.

In the coming weeks, Facebook will roll out an archive for people to save the stories most important to them. After a photo disappears from your story, you can find it in your story archive — a place only you can see. You can always choose to not save them.

Stories is a feature that lets people create sort of montage of their photos and videos that stay on top of news feed on top of the Facebook app for 24 hours.

Being able to view some of their old stories, said Hayes, was an issue that several people have raised. Facebook will now provide users with an option to turn out Stories Archive in their settings.

“After a photo disappears from a story, you can still re-view it, re-live it and re-share it,” Hayes said.

Tech giant Google is another company that has been launching products targeted at the India market and then taking it to other parts of the world.

Hayes said Facebook has more than 217 million people per month in India, which means more than half the Internet population of the country is on Facebook so we’re committed to building products with Facebook in mind.