How was your 2014? We drank A LOT of wine (and posed holding giant glasses filled to the brim as proof), bought some seriously stylish shoes (even if we do say so ourselves), ate a few delicious looking burgers, and took a few too many unnecessary selfies.
We know all of this thanks to Facebook’s 'Year In Review' app. Incase you haven't seen it it's a chronological collection of your most commented on pics, pulled together as a slideshow by Facebook, and it's been trending all our timelines for a few days now.
But now Facebook has had to say it’s sorry for the 'Year In Review' app after it brought up sad memories for some users.
The issue was first brought to our attention by web-designer Eric Meyer - who was heartbreakingly confronted by a picture of his six-year-old daughter, Rebecca, who tragically died of brain cancer earlier in the year in his year review.
Eric took to the blogosphere to talk about how upset it'd had made him, writing; ‘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.’
And Eric wasn’t alone – other Facebook users have complained of having similarly setting experiences when confronted with sad memories of pictures of recently deceased friends or family.
Of course this wasn’t Facebook’s intention - the product manager for the Year in Review, Jonathan Gheller said, ‘[The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy,’ he told The Washington Post.
Frankly if we’re honest we’re now a bit bored of looking at our mate’s 2014 – yes, it’s nice to look back – but let's be honest there’s been one too many #hotdoglegs than even we can handle, and yes - we know - we're guilty of it too.
So here’s to a less social clichéd snap happy 2015.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.