Facebook has launched a new iOS app called "Notify," which will send users notifications about various news stories and topics of their choosing.
On Nov. 11, Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg's social media site announced its new app for iOS. According to the Huffington Post, it could mean more notifications, but Facebook's "Notify" is designed for "notifications that matter."
Facebook's new app allows users to select from particular topics or news they want to read about. They will then be notified if there are new updates or information regarding their preferred topics.
Once a Facebook user gets a notification regarding the topic they have chosen from the "Notify" app, they can simply ignore it and leave it in the lock screen. If they want to read the article, they only need to swipe on the article and read on.
According to its description on iTunes: "Everyone has different interests, so Notify makes it easy to create a personalized mix of notifications about breaking news, the latest games scores, new movie trailers, local food and weather, cultural trends, and more." This makes "Notify" ideal for those who read a lot of shared articles on Facebook.
In the past, Facebook's stand-alone app Messenger was not received well by users of the social media because they felt as if it forced them to download the app. However, for Notify, the application is only available to iOS users and only those from the United States, reports Venture Beat. This only means that there is no forced downloading done by Facebook.
Some may find the new app useless since news sites or trending topic sites already have their own phone app which sends notifications to users. However, if "Notify" becomes successful, stand-alone apps by major websites that provide articles might simply stop updating and let Facebook do it for them instead.
While Facebook's "Notify" may seem unnecessary for now, Facebook seems determined to spend money on this type of notification app. Hence, some media outlets speculate that it has something to do with Facebook trying to gain control of the Internet by supplanting as many of its own apps as possible on the Web.