Facebook wants to make sure you don’t miss out on celebrating your friends’ weddings or engagements.
The social network is rolling out to all users Thursday a special events feature that puts information about momentous events in your friends’ lives — beginning with weddings and engagements — on display when you log in, alongside where you traditionally see information about friends’ birthday.
“Facebook has become a unique way people share and congratulate friends around exciting life events such as engagements and weddings or the arrival of a child,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable via email. Facebook says that it’s rolling the feature out “to make it easier to keep up with these momentous occasions and to ensure you can share in your friends’ joy.”
New wedding and engagement announcements will appear for two days after the couple makes the announcement if you don’t engage with them. If you have a ton of friends saying ‘I Do’ at once, then the section will rotate through each one.
Much like with birthdays, clicking on the notification will allow you to write on your friend or friends’ walls congratulating them, as well as see your friendship with that person over time. If you’re only friends with one half of a couple, you’ll see an “Add Friend” button.
The new events, however, won’t be added to the new calendar view that Facebook began rolling out this week.
What do you think about the new feature? Are you happy weddings and engagements are going to be displayed front and center? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
BONUS: How the Facebook Profile Has Changed Over the Years
2005 – The Facebook
Back in the days when The Facebook was only available to select networks, the News Feed didn’t exist. Users hopped between profiles like this one.
2006 – Mini-Feed
With the September 2006 launch of Facebook’s News Feed, user profiles contained mini-feeds that displayed user activity.
2007 – Interaction
While not a huge year for profile redesign, users began to interact more with each other’s profiles — remember Facebook Gifts?
2008 – The App Era
Users were able to add application tabs to their profiles (e.g. Bumper Stickers). Facebook also introduced the Publisher tool bar, which allowed a user to publish a status update, photo or link to his profile.
2009 – Pages
A new kind of user profile, Pages launched in 2009. Users could “become a fan” of a Page (until 2010, when they could “like” a page) to see that individual’s or business’ updates in their news feed.
2010 – A Visual Redesign
Late in 2010, Facebook launched a new profile that, up until this week, remained pretty much unaltered. Users took advantage by getting creative with the new photo banner at the top of the page. Also, Facebook told you what friends/fans you had in common in the upper right-hand corner of each page.
2011 – Ticker
As of Sept. 20, Facebook’s new ticker has the ability to follow a user around to every page, including profiles. The company also introduced a “View As” widget in the upper right-hand corner that allows a user to preview how others see her page.
2011 – Timeline
Announced Thursday at Facebook’s f8 conference, the new profile will act like a virtual scrapbook, featuring important milestones that have occurred since your time on Facebook. Compared to the evolution of the social network’s profile thus far, this redesign appears the most significant.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke
