Last week, Facebook debuted a new "Say Thanks" feature, enabling users to create personalized videos to say thank you to friends and family.
The video card combines two prebuilt themes with user's previous posts and photos. Some of the lines are cheesy or cliche - "It's been a wild ride" comes to mind - but, with upbeat music, fun graphics and a good overall pace, the video is pleasingly sentimental . The theme color is the classic Facebook blue, which although making the videos seem a bit over branded, also plays on the general theme of nostalgia.
Users pick from two categories of cards, Friends or Old Friends, and then choose their favorite posts or photos to include. The Friends choice allows seven pieces of content, while the Old Friends allows fifteen. The videos are available in English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. Sadly, no Arabic.
However, the easy interface comes with a major drawback. It is impossible to crop or change the order of photos. While this means that making a "Say Thanks" video takes less than two minutes, the video lacks the element of personalization that social media has become synonymous with. Heads are cropped off as photos are refitted into frames and the pre-ordained order of moments doesn't necessarily lend themselves to story telling.
Also, users can't help feeling that Facebook is, in a sense, advertising themselves with this content. Cards are automatically posted to both users Timelines. Card receivers are then encouraged to create their own card with this pre-written message, "You can make your own at facebook.com/thanks #saythanks." Although the timeline post can be edited, it feels very pro-Facebook, which is disappointing.
If you look at social media firestorms like the Ice Bucket Challenge, which on some level had to be Facebook's inspiration, they are promotional but not so much so that it feels like a corporate entity is creating these posts. People chose to post their Ice Bucket Challenge to various social networks, tagging friends and family. There was no message telling users to create their own versions at X site. The sharing and publicity was organic. It seems that with this new feature, Facebook is once again missing the carefree nature of other social media platforms and losing out on that key youth demographic.
To advertise this new feature, Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard drop-out himself, create a sweet video thanking his wife, Priscilla Chan, for being a good friend. The couple has been together for 11 years and this video marks their anniversary. Even if you don't love the new feature, you can't help but awww at Zuckerberg's tribute. Check out his full video below.
Have a fun "Say Thanks" video? Tag us @StepFeed.