Facebook Stories will be a visual representation of members’ stories about how the social network has impacted their lives.

The site will sit within Facebook, with users able to filter stories by date or theme, such as ‘coping with grief’, ‘finding love’ and ‘natural disasters’.

Randi Zuckerberg, marketing director at Facebook, said, “As we anticipate our 500m milestone, we wanted to find a different way to announce and celebrate it. In the past it has been all about the numbers and milestones, and we realised we had never taken the opportunity to celebrate users.”

Members can already submit stories in the User Stories part of the site. Facebook Stories was created by marketing company Involver and branding and data visualisation firm JESS3.