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A few years ago, Facebook started testing a feature called "On This Day." It was a feed of everything you posted to Facebook on a given date years in the past, as well as photos and posts you were tagged in on that date. Now, almost two years later, Facebook is officially launching On This Day — a feature that works quite similarly to Timehop, a service that lets you sign in with a variety of social networks (including Facebook) to receive a daily digest of whatever you posted across those networks years in the past.
Starting today, when users visit Facebook on the web or on their phones, they'll get an option to view the On This Day page (or you can go to the page directly, but it hasn't rolled out to everyone just yet). From there, you'll see the feed of content you posted in years past and have the option to share specific posts with your friends — but by default, only an individual user can see their On This Day feed. You can also then sign up for notifications so you remember to check it every day — that's exactly what Timehop does to keep users coming back.
Facebook is taking some precautions to make sure the nostalgia it dredges up doesn't get too painful — according to TechCrunch, On This Day will try and avoid surfacing potentially painful posts. For example, if you dutifully filled out your relationship status with your partner's info, Facebook will avoid showing you posts with that person in them if you changed your relationship status with them later. It'll also try to avoid showing you posts tagged with people who may have died in the past year, as well.
Timehop tried to be similarly aware this past Valentine's Day when it gave users a warning about seeing any potential past lovers in your daily recap — but it sounds like Facebook is trying to protect On This Day users the other 364 days out of the year, as well. Indeed, Facebook itself had its own issues this year when its Year In Review feature surfaced painful memories of deceased loved ones for users, so it's not surprising to see the company taking steps to avoid that happening again.
