Facebook creates personalized "Say Thanks" videos

SAN FRANCISCO — Want to say thanks to your friends and family for being in your life?

Facebook is introducing personalized videos that say it for you — just in time for Thanksgiving when many Americans want to express their gratitude.

Facebook users can create the "Say Thanks" videos with a couple of clicks, said Cameron Ewing, the design manager on the new feature.

"We wanted to make it super simple," Ewing said. "This is a great moment to let people unleash that notion of gratitude."

Facebook users can pick from four different themes (friends, family, old friends and it's complicated). Each video has photos and posts from your friendship on Facebook and can be edited so they capture the friendship, said Nick Kwiatek, the engineering manager behind Say Thanks.

Facebook users can preview the video and then share it. The video will post to that person's Timeline and, because the friend is tagged, it will show up in his or her Timeline as well. The videos will honor privacy settings.

"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," Kwiatek said.

They could be on to something. This is the same team that produced the popular "A Look Back" videos in February. The videos flashed through people's lives on Facebook, featuring 15 or so most liked photos, status updates and life events.

In the first few days, nearly 200 million people watched their Look Back video and half the people who watched their video shared it with friends. In February, 354 million people watched a Look Back video and about 157 million posted their own, according to Facebook.

Ewing says the Say Thanks videos are more intimate, shining a light on individual friendships. And we can expect to see more of this sort of thing from Facebook, he said.

"We have improved the efficiency at which we can serve video," Ewing said. "And that allows us to do these kinds of projects."

Indeed. Video is quickly growing in popularity on Facebook, in some cases overshadowing photo sharing.

On the company's third-quarter earnings call Facebook co-founder and CEO said investments in video were paying off.

"This quarter, we announced a new milestone for video on Facebook , achieving 1 billion video views a day of native videos," Zuckerberg said. "During the summer's Ice Bucket Challenge, there were more than 10 billion video views by 440 million people, which is a good sign of how far our video product has come."