Facebook helps its users hop back in time with On This Day feature

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/25/facebook-on-this-day-feature

Version 0 of 1.

Meet the age of digital navel-gazing, when it’s not enough just to Instagram the sandwich we ate for lunch – we want to be prompted to look back at the sandwich a year later, and share it with our friends all over again. Well, some of us do. Possibly.

This, at least, will be one response to the launch of a new feature on Facebook called On This Day: the latest example of digitally-curated nostalgia in the social networking world.

The feature provides a way to “look back at things you have shared and posts you’ve been tagged in on Facebook” according to product manager Jonathan Gheller, in a blog post announcing its launch.

“On This Day shows content from this date in the past. For example, you might see past status updates, photos, posts from friends and other things you’ve shared or been tagged in – from one year ago, two years ago, and so on. Only you will see this content unless you decide to share it with your friends.”

The new feature is rolling out on Facebook’s website and mobile apps, so although some people can access it via this link, others will have to wait until it’s enabled for their accounts.

Once it’s turned on, they’ll be able to subscribe to notifications when there’s a new memory to look at, with features to edit and delete the posts if those memories aren’t as joyful as Facebook is hoping.

Some people will love this feature, for sure. In fact digital nostalgia services, such as Timehop, have already proven popular with a certain segment of social networking users. That particular app, which resurfaces your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and Flickr posts, ended 2014 with 12 million users.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg says he believes in freedom of speech. Does Facebook?

Let’s hope Facebook has been thinking hard about all the ways it could go wrong. Memories of your abusive former spouse, or your dead sibling, or that post where you were in a hurtful argument, or ... Well, you get the picture. Not all memories are welcome ones.

Algorithms aren’t always fully attuned to human sensitivities, as seen when Facebook apologised in December 2014 for its Year In Review videos, which confronted a number of users with recently-deceased family members or friends.

Hopefully the lessons learned from that experience will be brought to bear on On This Day – the fact that people have to visit the specific page and turn notifications on before seeing its memories in their feed is one improvement.