If you’ve visited Facebook recently, chances are your news feed looks a little strange. Instead of your friends writing statuses, liking instagram photos and posting their most recent candy crush scores, they’re all sharing the same thing: a Facebook movie. Each of these movies is set to a touching and inspiring back-track that chronicles the life of Facebook members through their posts and photos from the beginning. So why is this seemingly simple concept so intriguing and downright ingenious?
Read on to find out.
Facebook: A Look Back
Facebook’s video campaign “A Look Back” celebrates its 10th anniversary by sharing the magic of memories with its 1.2 billion fan base. Instead of boasting about their success and chronicling the rise of the Facebook Empire, the social media company decided to go a different route and show each Facebook member how far they’ve come in the past 10 years (or however long they’ve been on Facebook).
This 62-second auto-customized movie shows Facebook members all over the world the progression of their popular posts and photos. The celebration and campaign has brought the social media site even more traffic and they truly are ringing in their 10th year with a bang.
Facebook’s creation of “A Look Back” is not only touching and heartfelt, it’s highly ingenious and likely to be one of the top social media trends to follow. Facebook hit the nail on the head with this one, while making members feel special and appreciated. “A Look Back” is also helping Facebook to gain higher website traffic and press.
First, Facebook gave its members an instantly personal video that is almost impossible to resist creating. Then, the website gave members the option to both edit their short film to their liking and then share it on their walls. By Facebook making its 10th birthday celebration all about the users, it created a huge, sentimental, video-montage snowball.
Celebrating Facebook
While Facebook’s birthday celebration is geared towards the social media company’s users, “A Look Back” also helps the social media site become more popular. This newest Facebook trend has had countless users sharing the link to their video on their pages, as well as the link to the page that other users can make their videos on. These posts draw attention back to Facebook, instead of having Facebook users post outside links to popular sites like BuzzFeed, Instagram and YouTube.
By clicking on the #FacebookIs10 link, viewers are redirected to a page of Facebook movies of celebrities, companies, news networks and of course, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook movie. Facebook’s birthday celebration has made an even bigger splash by creating buzz across the internet on technology news sites.
Ten short years ago on February 5th 2004, the world’s most popular social media site was born. Since Facebook’s inception has changed the way humans connect and communicate entirely, starting this digital, social phenomenon. With Facebook’s increasingly innovative and ground breaking features, like a linkable timeline, an interactive event platform and even a private language setting, Facebook can now add its birthday movie-montage to this hit parade. This personalized thank you and clever PR move has once again changed the world of social media. For the site that helps you remember all of your 500 friends’ birthdays, we wish you, Facebook, a happy 10th birthday.