Facebook launches ‘On this day’ feature to show users posts from the past

Scrolling down Facebook to find an old post, photo, or shared article can be a nightmare. Even though you can navigate the archive in months and years, things can still get lost in the stream. That is now a thing of the past thanks to Facebook’s introduction of a new feature called On This Day.

According to the social giant, On This Day is a “new way to look back at things you have shared and posts you’ve been tagged in on Facebook.”

On This Day shows users content from this date in the past. Users might, says Facebook, see past status updates, photos, posts from friends and other things they have shared or been tagged in, from one year ago, two years ago, and so on.

This is by no means a new innovation but it is interesting, especially when you consider the possible implications for the likes of Timehop. Timehop also works on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Flickr, Dropbox, and iPhoto. Given that Facebook has billion users, and once they migrate to On This Day and have no use for Timehop, Timehop will lose a significant number of its users.

Facebook’s decision is no doubt influenced by Timehop’s popularity. At the close of 2014, Timehop was reported to have 12-million registered users with0 half opening the app every single day.

Timehop allows Facebook users to share their memories with their followers. On This Day will only be seen by individual users, unless they decide to share it with friends. Users can also edit and delete old posts. These three options, sharing, editing and deleting the old posts that pop on On This Day is great for users and a smart move by Facebook. Last year Facebook was in trouble for its ‘Year in Review’, a photo slide of memories from user’s Facebook Timeline over the past year. Users were not happy with Facebook’s algorithm for choosing the images that reminded them of bad times. Facebook apologised.

For now the feature can be accessed by clicking on the On This Day bookmark, search for “On This Day,” or visit facebook.com/onthisday. It can also be seen in user’s News Feed.

Once users are on the page, they can choose to subscribe to notifications so they can be alerted when they have memories to look back on. Facebook says says it has been testing the feature and it will begin rolling out globally on web and mobile.