Facebook Is Testing Self-Destructing Posts

Facebook Is Testing Self-Destructing Posts
Bicycles are festooned with the Facebook logo during the Facebook Fit "Small Business Boot Camp" at Austin Music Hall, on Thursday, July 24, 2014 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Darren Abate/Invision for Facebook/AP Images)
Bicycles are festooned with the Facebook logo during the Facebook Fit "Small Business Boot Camp" at Austin Music Hall, on Thursday, July 24, 2014 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Darren Abate/Invision for Facebook/AP Images)

Ever wanted to set a self-destruct timer on your Facebook posts? Well, just in case, you may soon be able to do just that.

The social networking site is testing a new feature that will let you schedule a post for deletion. All you have to do is set the length of time, and the post will go poof when you want it to.

“We’re running a small pilot of a feature on Facebook for iOS that lets people schedule deletion of their posts in advance,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

Though it's unclear precisely when Facebook started the test, a few people have reported seeing the following option to "Choose Expiration" on their Facebook posts:

But what kind of posts would you want to self-destruct? Maybe information about an event? A declaration of love for a relationship you don't think will last? A birthday celebration?

Whatever the reason, it's nice that Facebook is attempting to make little improvements. Most recently, Facebook tested a feature that let users search through their friends' old posts.

Facebook has tried some things with self-destruction before. This past June, it accidentally released a Snapchat clone called Slingshot before it meant to. So far, Slingshot hasn't had much mainstream success.

Originally, what differentiated Slingshot from Snapchat was that when someone sent you a photo, you'd have to send one back to them in order to open the incoming image. But Facebook removed that feature last week, and now Slingshot is essentially just Snapchat with a different name. And Slingshot has a huge flaw: It doesn't warn you when someone takes a screenshot of your photo.

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