Facebook today is introducing a dedicated page called “Memories,” where you can reflect on the moments you’ve shared with family and friends over the years. The page is essentially an expanded collection of familiar Facebook features, like “On This Day,” which lets you look back on this date last year and the years prior, as well as other memory recaps and memories you’ve shared with friends.
The content found on the Memories page isn’t necessarily new, it just now has its own section on Facebook so you can more easily find it at any time.
Among the other options you’ll see here is the “Friends Made on this Day” feature, which includes a list of friends you made on this same day in the past. You’ll also see special videos and collages to celebrate your “friendversaries” – the term Facebook coined for celebrating the day you and someone became Facebook friends.
You’ve likely seen these video collages pop up in your News Feed before with their collections of shared photos set to upbeat music.
Also on this page are “Memories You May Have Missed,” for those who don’t log in often enough to see these sharing suggestions in their Feed, and”Recaps of Memories” – meaning those seasonal or monthly recaps that have been bundled into a short video or message ready for sharing.
The social network had first introduced these memory recaps just over a year ago, as a way to encourage more personal sharing on a network where organic sharing has been on the decline.
The company has tried a number of things to try to push more people to post their own messages and comment on friends’ updates – like adding colored backgrounds for status updates and adding support for GIFs in comments, among other things.
It even bought a briefly popular teen messaging app tbh, to power a new “Did You Know” social questionnaire which outright asked Facebook users to share personal tidbits.
But these days, people aren’t sharing as much personal content on Facebook directly, as before when it was the only game in town.
Now users’ posts are spread around on other social media sites, like Snapchat and Instagram (luckily it owns this one too), as well as through private messaging channels – where Facebook also has a large stake through WhatsApp and Messenger.
Memories are also tied to Facebook’s focus on time-well-spent efforts, which aim to increase the focus on quality engagement on Facebook, even if time on site suffers as a result.
For what it’s worth, Facebook notes the Memories feature includes controls to adjust what content you want to see, as some memories are not always things you want to revisit.
“We know that memories are deeply personal — and they’re not all positive. We try to listen to feedback and design these features so that they’re thoughtful and offer people the right controls that are easy to access,” writes Facebook Product Manager, Oren Hod, in an announcement. “We work hard to ensure that we treat the content as part of each individual’s personal experience, and are thankful for the input people have shared with us over the past three years,” Hod said.
Memories will be available through the Memories bookmark either to the left of the News Feed on the desktop, in the “more” tab in the bottom right of the mobile app, through notifications and messages in the News Feed, and through Facebook.com/memories.
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