Facebook makes saved Collections shareable for holiday gift giving

Facebook has packed in a lot of features over the years, and many of them seem to have been forgotten just as quickly as they appeared. Today, the company is announcing that it's dusting off once of its older features, Collections, and updating it for the gift giving season. If you previously didn't know what Collections were, you certainly aren't alone, so you can consider this your official introduction to the feature.

Collections evolved out of Facebook's Save feature, which first appeared back in 2014. Last year, Facebook began allowing users to organize their saved posts into these Collections, granting the Save feature a new level of organization. Up until now, those saved posts and created Collections were only visible to you, but that's changing today.

Facebook has made Collections shareable, so now you can let a hand-picked group of Facebook friends view them as well. The timing of this roll out definitely isn't a coincidence, as Facebook hopes users will create new Collections that serve as holiday wish lists they can then share with their friends and family. Those friends can add to the Collections you share as well, so you can use the feature to collect ideas for parties, outings, or any other activity you can come up with.

While users have plenty of ways to create wish lists online – Amazon's shopping lists and Pinterest's own Save feature (which is where Facebook got the idea for Collections) come to mind – Facebook might actually have an advantage over the rest here. On Facebook, users can save a variety of different items, whether they're individual posts, ads, videos, or Marketplace listings, so users can potentially create more thorough wish lists than they can on other platforms.

On the other hand, finding exactly what you want to add your Collection may be more of a process than filling out a wish list elsewhere, so whether or not this idea will actually take off is up in the air. The ability to share Collections will be going live this week for all users, so if you want to try creating a wish list through Facebook, keep an eye out for it.