Facebook is in the grip of an existential crisis. The big blue network seems to be stumbling from crisis to crisis. Facebook’s reputation has been dragged through the dirt from crises ranging from personal privacy to democracy-defeating mass data misuse. Whenever the social giant responds to one crisis, another rears its head.
The reasons for these continuous crises will be long and complicated, but at the heart of all of them will be Facebook’s efforts to move beyond what it is. For years now, Facebook has neglected its core purpose of bringing friends and family together via the internet, in favor of finding new digital markets it can then try to dominate and even manipulate. Whatever your opinions on all of that, it could be seen as a little heartwarming at least to see Facebook introducing a new feature that harks back to those innocent old days when Facebook was just a social network.
Facebook Life Events are all about commemorating your big moments
According to the blog post that announced Life Events, they are all about the core mission that Facebook has spent so long neglecting. Life Events are a way of announcing to your friends and family all the biggest moments of your life. These can include all of life’s positive events like engagements and new jobs but, maybe surprisingly, Facebook is also giving us the option to include what it calls more solemn events too. Facebook lists a number of certain life changes, achievements, and milestones that can be shared as Life Events including, “changes in your current city, work, education, and relationship status.”
Posted by Facebook on Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Life Events will come through to your friends and family as notifications and will give you a number of customization options to ensure you can tailor your Facebook Life Event as you wish. These customization options are quite extensive and include “animated photos and videos.”
Facebook will also offer help should you be unsure about what to include. “If you don’t have your own images, you can now choose from a wide range of art from Facebook. You can also include photos from the people or Pages you’ve tagged in the post, like your partner in a relationship or a new school or workplace. The photos and videos in your post also include subtle animations, like slowly zooming in.” You’ll also be able to select a special icon to represent your event when it shows up in people’s feeds.
As well as helping you create your Life Events, Facebook has also included animated reactions. Whenever somebody reacts to your event, they’ll see a short animation of how other people have reacted, too. Your Life Events will also be kept in a dedicated section on your timeline, but you’ll be able to hide specific Life Events should you wish.
Life Events are already available on Facebook for desktop and iOS and Android, so you can try them out now. We’d love to hear what you think of them, and the non-stop Facebook crises that just keep coming in the comments below.
