UPDATED 08:45 EDT / MARCH 25 2015

Your Facebook "legacy contact" can control your account after you die NEWS

Facebook’s “On This Day” ads Timehop-like features to the site

Facebook On this dayIf you can’t beat them, clone them. That seems to be Facebook’s motto anyway, as the social media giant bakes in more features that originally became popular through third-party apps.

The latest addition to Facebook is “On This Day,” a time capsule tool that allows users to relive moments that were shared on the same day one or more years ago. This feature may sound familiar to users of the popular app Timehop. In fact, its functions are basically identical, a fact that Facebook seems to admit in its announcement.

“People often look back at old photos and other memories they’ve shared on Facebook, and many have told us that they enjoy products and features that make this easier,” Facebook Product Manager Jonathan Gheller wrote.

Whether users call On This Day a Timehop-clone or an outright ripoff, the feature will likely be popular with the nostalgia crowd looking to relive memorable experiences through social media. Users can view old photos, status updates, wall posts from friends and so on. The feature also allows users to set alerts to see when they have interesting content to view on that day, and they can choose whether or not they want to share the content with their friends.

Facebook has created features for similar trips down memory lane in the past, but sometimes they have had unintended consequences. The social network’s “Year in Review” feature helped users create a montage of photos and events from the past year, and it started out by pre-selecting posts that it thought would be relevant.

Unfortunately, for some Facebook users this brought up memories that were not exactly pleasant. Web designer Eric Meyer criticized Facebook’s “algorithmic cruelty” for showing him images of his deceased daughter’s battle with cancer.

“For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in the hospital, or were hit by divorce or losing a job or any one of a hundred crises, we might not want another look at this past year,” he said at the time.

On This Day has not been rolled out to all Facebook users yet, but if you are one of the lucky few with access, you can try it out at facebook.com/onthisday.

Image credit: Facebook (c)

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