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Facebook wants to help you make friends with new ‘things in common’ feature

Facebook is all about helping you make new friends – and finding new excuses to analyze personal data. According to a report from CNET, Facebook wants to help people discover things they have in common with others through a new label on public conversations…

Essentially, when you read a public conversation – such as the comments on a post from a brand or publisher – Facebook will show you things you have in common with people who have participated in that conversation, as seen in the screenshot below.

For example, if you’re reading the comments on a publisher post, you might see a label that says “You both went to Indiana University” next to another commenter’s name. Other potential commonalities Facebook says it might highlight include being part of the same public Facebook group, your employer, and your home or current city.

Facebook says that it is currently testing this feature with a “small” number of users in the United States. The company wouldn’t elaborate on how (or if) it plans to roll the feature out to all users.

The goal of this feature, according to Facebook is to “help people connect” by making it easier to see commonalities:

“Knowing shared things in common helps people connect,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’re testing adding a ‘things in common’ label that will appear above comments from people who you’re not friends with but you might have something in common with.”

What do you think of this feature? Would it help you track down new people to be friends with? Let us know down in the comments!


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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com