Who Needs Yearbooks?

Yesterday my friend-slash-coworker (don’t know why I feel the need to point out that we work together, but it feels dishonest otherwise) introduced me to a new Facebook feature: Friendship Pages.

Apparently these pages were rolled out at the end of last month, so I guess I’m a little slow on the social networking uptake. In case you’re even slower than I, here’s a quick debriefing. (Side note: I’m sort of obsessed with it.) (And yes, I know it’s super cool to hate on all of Facebook’s additions lately, but I’m sorry, I’m into this.)

Basically, Friendship Pages aggregate all the correspondence and mutual content between two friends into one place. Just go to a friend’s profile page and click on where it says “View You and X” under X’s profile picture. You’ll be taken to a page that covers the entire history of your virtual friendship. Any photos you’ve been tagged in together, any wall posts you’ve exchanged, any mutual friends or likes, will all be there, staring you in the face like a high school yearbook page.

You can also see Friendship Pages between other people. If one of your friends posts on another friend’s wall, you’ll see a link that reads, “see friendship.” Click it.

And you can browse for friendships from any Friendship Page. In the upper righthand corner of the page you’ll see two search fields. Type in any two friends and you can see the history of their Facebook relationship.

There’s some debate out there as to whether or not this is a good feature. Here’s why I like it:

1) It really is a glorified yearbook page. It feels sort of old school, like a BFF scrapbook. Facebook even “picks” a profile pic for the page—a photo you and your pal are both tagged in. Right now many of my Friendship Pages are pretty bare since I do most of my communicating through other means. But imagine what the page would look like for a teenager? Or even for me in ten years? It’s another forum to track, however loosely, your history.

2) I’m just going to say it… Don’t judge.. This is great for Facebook stalking (or creeping, as the kids say). Want to know how your ex’s new relationship is going? Pull up their page. Wondering if those inseparable BFFs from college are still a twosome? Easy breezy.

The ease of stalkage is, of course, why some people don’t love this new feature. While all of this same information was available before,  it now takes less work to find. Though, to be clear, you almost always have to be friends with both parties in order to see their Friendship Page (the exception is based on a person’s privacy settings). So they are a tad bit regulated, even if there is a hefty element of Big Brother to the whole thing.

So, yeah. I’m a fan. Friendship Pages have all the addictive qualities of Facebook in general. It’s not like anyone is hanging out on the site to find out what someone’s favorite movie or “about me” quote is. We want to be a voyeur into someone else’s life. We want to see relationships.

And also food.

What do you think of Friendship Pages? Fascinating or creepy?