By David Harris, Product Manager
Life events on Facebook are a way to share, celebrate and come together around your most important milestones with friends and family. Just as they are in real life, life events on Facebook are distinguished from other everyday moments. To ensure these moments stand out even more, we’re redesigning this feature to give you more ways to commemorate your life events and help your friends see these important milestones.
Life events are a special type of post
When we began reimagining life events, we talked to people around the world to understand the milestones in people’s lives, how they share them, and the role they play. We heard that many people want to share and remember major life events, including difficult moments like the loss of a loved one. To help people do this, we’re providing new options, including animated photos and videos. 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. Just as before, when you create a new life event, you can include an icon to represent your update.
Come together with your friends and family around your news
Another theme we heard in our research was that life events can bring people together. Whether it’s around happy or more solemn occasions, sharing your life event on Facebook is a way to announce your milestone to your friends and family, including people from your past that you want to reconnect or stay close with. Now, for certain types of life events like changes in your current city, work, education, and relationship status, your friends may receive a notification to ensure they don’t miss your news. We filter the notifications so you only see the ones that are most relevant, and you can also turn off these notifications at any time.
When you react to a life event, other reactions and photos of friends who have reacted animate to celebrate or commemorate the moment.
Life events are highlighted on your Profile
Lastly, people told us about how these moments shape who they are and serve as anchor points in their lives. To recognize that, we’re now highlighting life events in a dedicated section on profiles. This can help you learn more about your friends and potential connections — and gives you a new way to reminisce and reflect on your big moments. You can choose to hide a life event by tapping “…” at the top of the post and selecting “Hide from Timeline.”
Inspired by you
We hope you enjoy the updated, redesigned life events feature, which will be rolling out globally over the coming days on iOS, Android and desktop. Make sure you have the latest version of the Facebook app installed to try it out. We look forward to hearing people’s feedback.
In the meantime, here’s a look at some of the ways people use life events:
