Facebook turns 12, celebrates Friends Day with new feature

February 4, marks Facebook’s 12th birthday. Each year Facebook recognizes this day as Friends Day and invites the world to celebrate and reflect on the importance of connecting. When people connect, powerful things happen and lives are changed. We see this on Facebook every day, whether it’s an exchange with an old friend that brings a smile to your face or a new connection that changes your life path, or even the world.

To celebrate, Facebook is releasing an updated degree of separation statistic, highlighting inspiring stories about the power of friendship, and launching new products to further encourage our community to rally around their friends.

Friends Day Videos

To help the community celebrate the importance of friendship, Facebook is delivering a personalized Friends Day video to millions of people around the world. These videos stitch together special moments with their friends in a short film that can be edited and shared. People can view their video at the top of News Feed, or by clicking “Watch Yours” below a friend’s Friends Day video.

 

Telling Stories of Friendship

Friends Day is also an occasion to celebrate extraordinary stories about the power of friendship. GirlCrew, a Facebook group originally created in Dublin, empowers women to find friends and organize events in their area. There are now 22,000 people in GirlCrew Facebook groups in more than 40 cities worldwide. Earlier this week, we hosted an intimate Friends Day event where 18 members of the Facebook community with incredible stories, including GirlCrew, were invited to come to our Menlo Park headquarters.

 

Best Friends and Friendship Sticker Packs

To give people a fun way to show friends they care, Facebook is releasing two sticker packs called “Best Friends” and “Friendship.” These packs are now available to download for free in the Sticker Store, which can be accessed in Messenger or at facebook.com/stickers.