Facebook New ‘Friends Awards’ for Friends Day celebrations: Know how it will work , II Facebook announces 'Friends Awards’ with a personalized video, short films , II Facebook celebrates 'Friends Day' on its birthday: Here's how you can also give e-awards to your friends

Facebook Friends Day on February 4: This time give out ‘Friends Awards’ to those on your list.
Facebook has announced ‘Friends Awards’ as part of its annual Friends Day celebration. Of course most people associate friendship day as the one on the first Sunday of August, but Facebook has made its own Friends Day on February 4, which also happens to be the social media company’s birthday. Facebook was started on February 4 in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, who is currently CEO and co-founder of the company. Facebook is turning 14 this year.
As part of ‘Friends Day’ experience, Facebook will show people messages on the top of their News Feed with a personalised video wishing them a Happy Friends Day. Once the video is over, users will be shown Friends Awards from the video as well. Users will have the option of editing out this ‘Friends Award’ list and create their own or go with the pre-decided ones. Users will be able to nominate their select friends from the list of templated awards, according to Facebook.
The ‘Friends Award’ will be based on the kind of activities a user has shared with a particular friend. For instance, one can nominate a friend as ‘Bestie’ or ‘Great Listener,’ or ‘Knows How to Make Me Laugh’ etc, according to some examples listed by the company. Facebook will also create short videos to highlight what it calls “remarkable friendships.” Finally, the Facebook camera will also get three new Camera filters to mark the company’s fourteenth birthday. Facebook’s camera has also been revamped similar to Instagram and has the option of sharing Stories for users, along with live filters, hashtags, etc.
Facebook recently posted its Q4 2017 and annual results with ad revenues beating Wall Street expectations. However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced the company planned to reduce the number of viral videos it was showing to people. In fact, it has already begun to implement this to its algorithm for News Feed. Zuckerberg said that while this would reduce time spent on Facebook, the focus for 2018 is to help people have more meaningful connections on the social network. Facebook has also announced changes to News Feed to reduce content from publishers, and instead show more of what a user’s friends are sharing.
Facebook claims that in 2017, there twice as many posts about friendship than in 2016, and that celebrating friendships and birthdays were some of the top activities on the network. Facebook also claims more than 600 million ‘Friendversary’ videos were shared in 2017 on the site. However, Facebook is facing a problem where more original content sharing on the network has slowed down and instead moved to more networks like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.
Every year, Facebook celebrates its birthday on 4 February. This year also, it celebrated by marking it as “Friends Day”.

A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo. Reuters.

According to the Facebook Newsroom, Facebook is giving users a chance to show their love and gratitude to their friends who have been in their lives.
Facebook users will receive notifications at the top of their News Feed wishing them a Happy Friends Day, with a personalised Friends Awards video. This is a means to acknowledge your friends for the roles they have played in your life.
These awards come in the form of a slideshow and there are even templates to help you create your own slideshows such as 'Bestie', 'Great Listener' or 'Knows how to make me laugh'.

Facebook Friends day. Facebook newsroom.

Facebook Friends Day awards

In addition to this, Facebook has also brought three new camera filters on the occasion of Friends Day.
Apart from this, Facebook has also released five videos highlighting few friendships that have lived the test of time across the globe.
"February 4 is Friends Day, a day to show gratitude for all the important people in your life. To help you celebrate, you will see a message from Facebook at the top of News Feed wishing you a Happy Friends Day with a personalized Friends Awards video," The company said in a blog post.
It said that "After the short video you can create and share your own Friends Awards - pre-made or by creating your own from a template, like "Bestie," "Great Listener" and "Knows How to Make Me Laugh."
The company also claims that more than 600 million 'Friendversary' videos were shared in 2017 and people in India made most friends in the last year. On an average, nearly 750 million new friendships were formed each day in the platform.
The blog post further said that "From the beginning, Facebook has been about connecting with your friends, which is why we're inspired to see more than 750 million new friendships formed on Facebook each day. We hope everyone will take time this weekend to show a little gratitude."
Meanwhile, the company has recently reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2017, in which the company's business grew 47 percent year-over-year to $40 billion,
"Our community continues to grow with more than 2.1 billion people now using Facebook every month and 1.4 billion people using it daily. Our business grew 47 percent year-over-year to $40 billion, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
But 2017 was also a hard year. The world feels anxious and divided -- and that played out on Facebook. We've seen abuse on our platform, including interference from nation states, the spread of news that is false, sensational and polarizing, and debate about the utility of social media. We have a responsibility to fully understand how our services are used and to do everything we can to amplify the good and prevent harm. This is my personal challenge for 2018, he said