Facebook: Your Synced Photos Will Be Deleted Unless You Download The Moments App

Facebook has become much more aggressive in getting users to download its separate mobile apps. Recently Facebook issued a warning that it will be disabling messaging within its web application and recommended users download the Messenger app instead. Now Facebook is forcing users to download its photo-sharing app called Moments otherwise their synced photos will be deleted.

In response to the warning, the Moments app saw a massive increase in downloads and it climbed to the very top of the App Store rankings. It was at the number one position of the "Free iPhone Apps" on the Apple App Store as of yesterday and it still remains in the top fifteen today. According to TechCrunch, the Moments app was ranked somewhere between 90 and 100 before the photo deletion warning was sent out. The warning Facebook emailed to its users said that it is going to delete Synced photos and albums unless the Moments app is installed by July 7th.

Many users downloaded the Moments app because they simply did not fully understand which photos will be deleted. This is what Facebook's email warning says:

We wanted to let you know that photos you privately synced from your phone to Facebook will be deleted soon. Earlier this year, they were moved to Moments, a new app from Facebook.

If you want to keep your (number of photos), download Moments and log in before Jul 7. If you don't want Moments, you can also download these photos directly to your computer from your Facebook profile. Otherwise, they'll be deleted. This won’t affect photos or videos you've shared on Facebook.

Moments lets you organize and privately share photos with friends. It's free on iOS and Android.

You will notice that there is not much of an explanation about what the differences are between synced photos uploaded to Facebook and mobile photo uploads. The photos that will be deleted on July 7th are the ones that are still stored in the “Synced from Phone” album on the desktop version of Facebook and the “Synced” album in the Facebook mobile app.

Facebook added the ability to privately sync iOS photos in 2012. Photos in the iOS camera roll were automatically uploaded to the private Synced Photos album, making it easier for users to move around photos they took into other albums. The private synced photo folder is able to store up to 2GB worth of images at a time. Facebook ended its photo syncing feature on January 10th and started sending backed up photos to the Moments app instead.

Facebook's major drive in getting users to download its other apps has worked out for them in the past. For example, the Facebook Messenger app launched in August 2011 and it hit around 200 million users in April 2014. Around August 2014, Facebook started forcing users to download the separate Messenger app by removing messaging capabilities from the main Facebook app. As a result, the user base of the Facebook Messenger app more than doubled to 500 million about three months later. Now Facebook Messenger is hovering above 900 million users. Facebook is even generating significant revenue from its Messenger app through the mobile payment services, customer service programs and the newly introduced artificial intelligence chat bots.

What is the Facebook Moments app all about anyway? Facebook Moments is described as an “easy way to get all the photos of yourself trapped on your friends’ phones. After events, celebrations, trips or just hanging out, it's no longer a hassle to collect all the photos and videos you'll want to look back on. With Moments, you can quickly give your photos to friends and get their photos, too.” The app uses facial recognition to identify people in the photos and allows you to send batches of photos to them. Specifically, the Moments app suggests you to send batches of photos to your friends based on dates and locations.

I was an early adopter of the Moments app. Initially, I believed that the app would be resourceful. But the more I used it, the more I found it to be far from perfect due to its failed facial recognition attempts. There were many times where the facial recognition feature mistook me for other family members or friends of mine that it thinks I look like. After I inadvertently sent batches of photos to people that were not actually in them, I decided to delete the Moments app and stop syncing my photos to Facebook. And the user interface still has plenty of room for improvements in terms of informing users who they are actually sending the photos to. Now I back up all of my photos and videos to Google Photos instead. I like the Moments app concept, but I believe there should be more granular controls in the photo sending process.

Fortunately, Facebook is offering an option to download your synced photos as a ZIP file — which can come in handy if you do not have it backed up anywhere else and you want to avoid downloading the Moments app. There is also an option to delete the photos permanently. You will find these options by going to your Facebook profile on the desktop version of the social network, clicking on the Photos tab and then tapping on Synced from iPhone:

What are your thoughts about how Facebook is aggressively getting users to download the Moments app? Please leave a comment!