Facebook has launched a new way for its users to say thanks to their friends and family through the social network.
Introducing the "Say Thanks" feature, a new functionality that allows users to create personalized video cards that could be sent to Facebook friends.
The update was announced through a post in the Facebook Newsroom, jointly written by design manager Cameron Ewing and engineering manager Nick Kwiatek.
Ewing said that users will be able to create their videos through the "Say Thanks" feature with just a few clicks, adding that the development team wanted the feature to be very simple in order to make it easy for people to express their gratitude.
Facebook users will have four themes to choose from: "friends," "family," "old friends," and "it's complicated." Each video will include Facebook pictures and posts on the friendship between the video sender and the receiver, which can be edited to highlight the best moments. This aims to capture the reason why users are sending their thanks, according to Kwiatek.
Once the video is complete, the user can watch a preview before sharing it. The video will automatically be posted on the Timeline of the user and the person that the user is saying thanks to, and will follow the existing privacy settings of the user.
"Our hope is that people will love it, that it will make them feel good and they will want to share this with their friends," said Kwiatek.
The team that developed the "Say Thanks" feature is the same team behind the "A Look Back" feature that was released in February. The feature created videos that pieced together moments of the lives of users through Facebook content, including about 15 of the most liked pictures, status updates and events that the user posted on his or her account.
The "A Look Back" feature was a major success. Over the first few days since its release, almost 200 million users have watched their personal videos, with half of them sharing their videos with their friends. For the whole month of February, according to Facebook, 354 million users watched a video created with the feature, and around 157 million users posted their own videos.
According to Ewing, the "Say Thanks" feature will create more intimate videos that will honor special relationships.
In addition, according to Ewing, the improvements that Facebook has made in serving video allowed the team to create such projects, with more to be expected.
