'Say Thanks': Facebook launches new feature to encourage gratitude this ...

Courtesy of Paula Jones/Facebook screenshot

Facebook recently introduced a new way of expressing gratitude just in time for Thanksgiving as it launched its new 'Say Thanks' video creator. The feature has received mixed reviews.

Facebook recently introduced a new way of expressing gratitude just in time for Thanksgiving as it launched its new 'Say Thanks' video creator. The feature has received mixed reviews in a predictable fashion as critics tear it apart while Facebook users have flooded newsfeeds with videos saying thanks to their friends and family.

Similar to the 'Look Back' videos that Facebook released in early 2014, the 'Say Thanks' videos allow users to select a friend to whom they can then express thanks through a video card. Once the friend is selected, Facebook generates photos saved of the user and their friend. It offers very few options for personalization other than allowing the person to choose 10 photos, pick the greeting and then choose whether the person is an old friend, a friend or a family member. Facebook then creates a 52-second video set to music with a few phrases expressing thanks that can be posted to someone's Facebook wall.

'We wanted to make it super simple,' design manager Cameron Ewing said in an interview with USA Today. 'This is a great moment to let people unleash that notion of gratitude.'

Some have found the feature a little too simple as critics have called the fixed-format videos 'cheesy' and 'impersonal.' Slate called the project 'a terrible way to thank someone.' Slate writer Lily Hay Newman specifically pointed out that this is a first effort at replacing thank-you notes, which are one of the few things in our society that has remained on paper in a digital-savy society.

'The fact that society still values written thank-you notes doesn't mean that a heartfelt digital thank-you isn't possible,' Newman wrote. 'But, as you can see above, 'Say Thanks' is just an amalgam of everything that's impersonal about digital gratitude.'

Ultimately, the feature encourages people to express gratitude and to be thankful for the people in their lives and while some believe the feature is generic and lacks a person touch, users can make the message they post with the video as personal as they would like. For example, Brooke Fail from North Carolina wrote to her little sister, Amanda, who is expecting her first child, 'Hey Amanda, just wanted to make you a cute little video too! We have had so much fun together and I'm so thankful for you! Also I was thinking the other day about how sweet you were taking care of me when I got my wisdom teeth out and I just know you're going to be an awesome mom!! I love you!!'

Add a nice message to photos set to music and it is bound to solicit nostalgia. If you're not convinced, maybe a few quotes from opinion leaders on expressing gratitude can help you understand that encouraging users to 'say thanks' can't be so bad:

Gladys Browyn Stern - 'Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone'

William Arthur Ward - 'Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not give it.'

Mark Twain - 'I can live for two months on a good compliment.'

Therefore, while there are probably a thousand better ways to thank someone, Facebook's videos are encouraging gratitude. Thus, it would seem to be something that should be supported rather than bashed.

'Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted,' English author Aldous Huxley said.

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin called gratitude 'a mark of a noble soul' while President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said, 'Often we feel grateful and intend to express our thanks but forget to do so or just don't get around to it.'

It's hard to forget when the videos cover your newsfeed and it's easy to 'get around to it' when the video can be made in less than a minute.

So maybe Facebook is doing a good thing and maybe people should take this opportunity, whether through a 'cheesy' facebook video or through something more personal, to express gratitude for those they love.

Email: mjones@deseretdigital.com