Share the love with Facebook’s heartwarming new feature

EXCLUSIVE: A new Facebook experience is set to make you feel all warm and fuzzy. Here’s your first look at the feature everyone will be talking about.

FACEBOOK is giving you the chance to share the love with your mates through a heartwarming new experience.

The feature, called Say Thanks, will allow users to share sophisticated video cards with mates that feature some of your most memorable moments.

The minute-long mini-films are designed to allow you express your gratitude to friends near and far — be they your significant other, relative, co-worker or old friend.

You can use it to thank your mum and dad for being there, reminisce about your wedding day or flash back to that unforgettable holiday.

three friends taking photos with a smartphone

Facebook design manager Cameron Ewing told news.com.au friends were at the core of the Facebook experience, and the designers were always looking for new ways to celebrate those relationships.

“Saying thanks is a universal sentiment, but we rarely have the opportunity, the time or the wherewithal to express it,” he said.

“We wanted to make it an easy, fun and engaging thing to do.”

There are four video templates that users can populate with photos and posts to create a personalised video, all within a matter of seconds.

The templates are tailored to different types of relationships: friends, old friends, family and “it’s complicated”.

Mr Ewing said the “it’s complicated” category was a “tongue-in-cheek” nod to the iconic Facebook relationship status.

“All of these films tell a friend story, but not every friendship falls neatly into the first three categories. This allows us to make sure people weren’t left out,” Mr Ewing said.

Friends playing video game

Engineering manager Nick Kwiatek said it made sense to create the virtual thankyou notes as videos because it was the “medium of the day”.

“People will be surprised to see these videos from friends and our simple hope is that is makes people feel good,” he said.

Mr Kwiatek said the feature combined technology and filmmaking to create something “emotionally resonant”.

“It’s timed in a certain way to tell a story,” Mr Ewing said.

Say Thanks works on both mobile and desktop.

He said Say Thanks “upped the ante” on last year’s popular feature A Look Back, which pulled together individual Facebook users’ most memorable moments over the past decade.

For Mr Ewing, the creation of the new videos had been a labour of love.

“It’s a really exciting space and it’s genuinely about friends sharing thankfulness. We hope people like it,” he said.

We give it a big thumbs up.

Friends having fun with smartphones

HOW TO SAY THANKS

● Choose a friend and Facebook will automatically populate the video with pictures and memorable moments

● Select a theme: friends, old friends, family or “it’s complicated”

● Edit photos to best represent your friendship

● Watch the preview

● If you’re happy, click share and the video will be posted to your timeline and the timeline of your friend.

Say Thanks will be rolled out in Australia over the next 24 hours. The feature will be available on desktop and mobile in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish. Click here to give it a go.