Social media site Facebook has recently made changes to its ‘On This Day’ feature, which will see users being reminded of a greater variety of updates and memories.
The feature, which is now two years old, allows users to see what happened on the platform on that particular day each year since they joined the site. Prior to the update, this included any status’ and photos the user posted, and any messages that appeared on their timelines from their friends.
It is believed that the social platform chose to expand this feature because of the lack of uptake in its Stories feature, which has worked so well on other platforms. This could be because many Facebook users see the site as a record of their life events, thanks to the platform’s ability to resurface significant life events for the users, so it makes sense that it has now chosen to focus on this area.
Another reason to revamp On This Day is so that users don’t see the same posts resurfacing on an annual basis from the same date in the past, as this could end up being rather tedious, especially if a specific date brought up bitter or sad memories for the user.
As part of the update, Facebook will now remind users of posts from that particular month, or a season that has just ended, similar to the annual recap it provides users at the end of each year showing the highlights of the last 365 days on the site. These seasonal/monthly updates will be sharable, should the user wish to reminisce about these memories with their friends.
Furthermore, users are also set to receive “celebratory” notifications relating to when they make a notable number of friends or the number of times the users’ posts have been liked. For example, Facebook could inform a user that their friends counter has hit the 500 marker, or that their collective posts on the platform have been liked more than 1,000 times. These particular notifications are not shareable at present, but it is anticipated that they will be in the future.
Oren Hod, the Product Manager at Facebook announced these changes in a blog post at the end of last week and revealed that the company had plans to launch a range of similar notifications in the coming months.
Research into this feature has showed that it is one of the network’s most diverse, with some people checking these reminders on a daily basis, with others finding them annoying and choosing to switch them off.
In order to combat the more negative reviews, and as a way to avoid bringing up memories that trigger negative emotions, Facebook has rolled out the ability for users to let the network know that they do not want to be reminded about specific posts and memories, so that the experience is more enjoyable for users. Facebook has allowed users to filter their memories by date or person for a while now, although these options weren’t that obvious to find.
- Chrome to warn users regarding insecure web forms - August 20, 2020
- Google trials virtual business cards in India - August 14, 2020
- DuckDuckGo claims Google market share would drop if users given choice - August 11, 2020