Facebook testing 'read-it-later' button for News Feed

Facebook is reportedly testing a new feature for its News Feed that would allow users to save feed articles for later readings.

The read-it-later Save button would create a section of bookmarked sites on a user's profile, which could be accessed afterwards.

According to Tech Crunch, a few weeks after Facebook acqui-hired the talent from Spool, the social media giant started testing a native Save button on mobile, which was never rolled out.

However, latest screenshots of the new feature show a Save button located below an external link's preview window near the Like button.

When clicked, it saves a link to the article to a 'Saved' section of their Timeline and a shortcut to that section appears on the homepage's left rail navigation sidebar.

The Saved section shows a site's headline, link, thumbnail image, the person who originally posted the article to a user's feed, and a share button.

The feature could encourage news publishers to focus more on pushing content to Facebook since Save could boost referral traffic.

The report said that if Facebook rolls out a version of Save, it would be in direct competition with Twitter mobile's third party read-it-later service Pocket, Instapaper or Safari Reading List.