Facebook Celebrates Friends Day with Treats for You

The estimated reading time for this post is 5 minutes

Facebook celebrated its 12th birthday last week, also known as Friends Day, with some gifts for you. If you use Facebook then you have some special surprises waiting for you.

You can see a video of your dear friends on Facebook, get new friendship stickers, see how many degrees of separation you are from the rest of the world, and learn about the most popular topics on Facebook.

=> Also see, Facebook’s Fun New Photo Collages, GIFs and Live Video Features

Facebook Friends Day Video

Facebook has a treat for you. If you’ve logged on to Facebook in the past few days you may have noticed your friends sharing their Friends Day videos. If you’ve actively posted photos on your Facebook account, you may have your own Friends Day video waiting for you.

Posted by Facebook on Tuesday, February 2, 2016

To see your Friends Day video, go to the Facebook Friends Day page. Your Friends Day video is private, unless you decide to share it with others on Facebook.

But before you share it you may want to edit your video to include different photos or messages. Just because Facebook thinks someone is a cherished friend doesn’t mean you agree.

If you decide to edit your Friends Day video you must do so before you share it. After you share your video you are no longer given the option to edit it.

To edit your video, click Edit. You’ll see the video at the top of the screen with a bar underneath. On the bar is a blue dot you can drag to move the video ahead or back. Below the video is a grid of your Facebook photos.

Drag the blue dot to find the photo you want to remove. Then look at the grid to find a photo to use as a replacement. Drag the replacement photo on top of the photo you want to delete and the replacement photo will appear in your video.

When you’re done editing your video you can share it with others in a post and add a message to your post.

Learn more about the Friends Day videos at the Facebook Help page.

New Friendship Stickers

Facebook also celebrated its anniversary by adding new friendship stickers. You can add ones to your Facebook account at the Facebook Sticker Store. Yes, they’re free.

See, Get Social with Emoticons on Twitter and Facebook! to learn about using Facebook stickers to enhance your messages.

3.57 Degrees of Separation

A Broadway play called Six Degrees of Separation, made into a movie featuring Will Smith, was based on the sociological theory from the 1920’s that everyone in the world is connected to each other by six degrees. If you want to connect with an individual you can reach out to your friends and you will be able to connect with that person through a network of no more than five individuals.

If you’re thinking social media has brought us closer since the 1920’s, you’re right, according to Facebook. Instead of being separated by six degrees, we’re down to an average of 3.37 degrees of separation. According to Facebook, “Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people.”

The research is explained more fully in Facebook’s blog post Three and a half degrees of separation. There you can see how Facebook calculated these figures and see how many degrees of separation you have from everyone else on Facebook.

Hey, maybe some day we’ll know everyone and be down to one degree of separation!

Your Thoughts

Have you seen your Friends Day video? Did you edit yours before you shared it? Are you surprised at how many degrees of separation you have to everyone on Facebook? Which of the most popular interests are most interesting to you?

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!
* Six Degrees of Separation image courtesy of Daniel via Wikimedia Commons

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Comments

Harleena Singh says

February 8, 2016 at 7:58 am

Hi Carolyn,

Happy Monday 🙂

Lovely post indeed! Oh yes – I’ve been seeing the Friends Day video all over Facebook, with many of my friend’s and some family members sharing theirs, but have still to try one out myself. Have you made yours too?

Still to try the degrees of separation I have with everyone on Facebook, that too is in waiting. I thought I’d do them both this weekend, but we had house-guests so just couldn’t get down to it, but would soon – just to see how it all goes. The stickers I did try and I love that they keep coming up with new ones so often – look so cute when shared, isn’t it?

Thanks for sharing and the reminder to get it done! Have a nice week ahead 🙂
- Carolyn Nicander Mohr says
  
  February 8, 2016 at 12:06 pm
  
  Hi Harleena, I do hope you have a chance to check out your Friends Day Video and degrees of separation. So much fun!
  
  I did watch my Friends Day video. I edited it to change the last picture to the one I use as my cover photo. I really enjoyed seeing which photos Facebook chose for me.
  
  The degrees of separation is very cool. It really makes you think about the power of social media.
  
  You’re right, stickers are a fun, free way to jazz up your messages.
  
  Thanks for your comment and sharing, Harleena. Have a wonderful week ahead!
Mike Maynard says

February 8, 2016 at 12:26 pm

Hi Carolyn,

Another really useful article. I did view the friends video and changed it a little. The six degrees of separation I had heard of before. I used to have a friend who was related to royalty so the separation from the royal family was less than 6 degrees. It’s probably a lot more than that now. There are a couple of connections on LinkedIn that claim royal blood, though. My great niece is enjoying a little fame now so that is enough for me!

The Facebook list will be useful. Those topics probably match the topics people are interested in on blogs too. Now I have a Facebook page for my blogsI had better pay attention, so I copied a list of the top 100! I’m getting much better at taking photos in the really bad light now but gave up last week when it started to rain too. I’m getting such a collection of equipment now I need a bigger camera bag!
- Carolyn Nicander Mohr says
  
  February 8, 2016 at 6:25 pm
  
  Hi Mike, That’s so great this article was helpful to you. I love hearing that!
  
  You bring up an excellent point. If we factor in other social media sites, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, our degrees of separation might be much lower. Since I’m connected to you on Facebook, I’m connected to royalty too, but at one degree more than you. How cool is that?
  
  I’ll have to check out your article on shooting photos in low light. I just thought you were supposed to use flash!
Adrienne says

February 8, 2016 at 2:48 pm

Hey Carolyn,

I had seen other’s but didn’t see my own. I just hopped over there and it’s so adorable. A lot of it are my close friends and family too so it was really cool seeing how they put that together.

Facebook has brought a lot of people together, I’ve caught up with friends I haven’t seen in so many years and then of course it’s much easier to keep up with my relatives there too. We’re all spaced out all over the United States and it’s not that easy to pick up the phone and have a good conversation anymore. Everyone is SO busy these days.

Thanks for sharing this with us, I really enjoyed that. Now to decide if I’m going to share it publicly. Oh heck, why not!

~Adrienne
- Carolyn Nicander Mohr says
  
  February 8, 2016 at 6:31 pm
  
  Hi Adrienne, I’m so glad you checked out your video. Mine was so meaningful to me, that’s great you enjoyed yours too!
  
  I’m not one to tell you whether you should share your video but I did share mine and I’m glad I did.
  
  You’re right, Facebook is amazing at keeping us in touch with others. I love connecting with my friends on Facebook, no matter how far away they live.
Lisa Sicard says

February 8, 2016 at 3:16 pm

Hi Carolyn,
I did check mine out but found it did not let you pick all your pictures on FB to share, only some. I did edit but not shared yet. I wanted to go back and edit more if other pics were available. Do you know how many they allow for? It is a cool video and saw some of my friends videos too. Hard to believe they have been around that long 🙂
Thanks for sharing about this Carolyn.
- Carolyn Nicander Mohr says
  
  February 8, 2016 at 6:35 pm
  
  Hi Lisa, I don’t know why only some photos are available. Perhaps it’s the dimensions of the photos because they have to fit in the shape of the photos in the video.
  
  You can only add as many photos as are in the video. You can’t include more than that.
  
  I hope you’re able to get your Friends Day video the way you want it, Lisa.
Ravi Roshan Jaiswal says

February 9, 2016 at 2:54 am

Hello Carolyn!

Nice Article!

I like to be active on facebook. And it was really great new features for me. I was enjoying while watching my photo with my friends photo.

Facebook is very popular and important site for us because we can’t meet from our friends because they live in different-different place, but we always keep in touch through one of the important social media site which is “facebook”.

It was really great surprising gift by facebook for us…

Nice mentioned…

Thanks
-Ravi
Sylviane Nuccio says

February 10, 2016 at 2:27 am

Hi Carolyn,

It’s been a while I haven’t been here. I always see you at Harleena’s and Adrienne’s so I thought I’ll hop over here from there.

For once I was one of the first of my friends (I think) to discover that cool video, and I thought that it was well done, because they really showed pictures of true friends, I would say.

That list of the 200 top topics is kind of funny for some of the topics, but interesting to know.

Have a great day!

~Sylviane

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