Facebook goes nostalgic, shows old status updates of users

Social networking giant Facebook is giving its users a pinch of nostalgia, with a feature showing their status updates exactly a year or two ago. Tech site Mashable speculated Facebook, which quietly rolled out the new feature, may be trying to remind users of the time they spent at Facebook so they need not switch to other sites. “We’re not sure if Facebook thinks of these nostalgic features as just fun little additions to the product, or whether they serve a purpose. Perhaps Facebook wants to remind its users that they have invested years of their lives into their product, so perhaps they shouldn’t switch to something new. Or perhaps it’s just another one of Facebook’s many product engagement tools," Mashable said. Mashable said many users noticed the change over the weekend, with the feature appearing as a small box in the right-hand column above the advertising. “Based on a search of public Facebook and Twitter status updates, we believe the feature began rolling out in a limited test on August 11. More and more users started noticing in the last twelve hours, though," it said. The feature is usually titled “On This Day in 2010″ or “On This Day in 2009," Mashable said. “We’ve typically found that the ‘On This Day’ box appears while you’re browsing a photo album," it added. Users who have had multiple status updates on one day can click the “Show More" button. The Mashable article said the new feature only seems to go back to 2009. However, it said this was not the first time Facebook gave its users a touch of nostalgia. “This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to help uses discover their past activity on Facebook. It also has a feature for surfacing photos from your past," it added. — LBG, GMA News