Facebook tracks your video watching preferences

You don’t just have to like certain videos for Facebook to bring similar clips to your attention. The social network is now tracking your preferences or behavior when it comes to videos. It now also takes into account if you’ve switched the video to full-screen, increased volume, and even switched to HD (when it’s available).

According to a Facebook release, "We are now taking into account more interactions with videos that we have learned indicate whether someone found that video interesting, such as choosing to turn on sound, making the video full screen, and enabling high definition. So if you turn the volume up or make the video full screen, we have updated News Feed to infer you liked the video and will show you similar videos higher up in your News Feed. We have found that this helps us show people more videos that they are interested in.”

Source: Facebook | Via: Lifehacker Australia

Facebook Messenger introduces game component with ‘Doodle Draw’

If you’ve played Draw Something before, you’ll be able to play Doodle Draw, an iOS and Android app that works with Messenger. Facebook recently introduced third-party apps into its messaging app and Doodle Draw is one of the over 40 apps available. Basically, you pick one out of three words to draw a picture off on your phone, you then send this to your Facebook friend for them to guess what you drew. If your friend has the app, it’ll take them to the app. If they don’t have the game, they can still see the artwork within Messenger and reply from there.

Source: Wall Street Journal | Download: Google Play Store (Free) + Apple App Store (Free) 

Facebook boosts security of its emails to you with encryption

Facebook might be the hub of oversharing but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to keep communications with you secure. The company announced that it’s allowing users to add PGP keys to profiles so the emails Facebook sends you can be encrypted. If you aren’t convinced about the legitimacy of the project, one of the testers for this program is security expert and former Tor lead Runa Sandvik.

Source: Facebook | Via: Engadget

Facebook Canada introduces AMBER Alert System

In line with International Missing Children’s Day, Facebook Canada, together with police authorities across the provinces in Canada, has introduced an AMBER Alert system. This tool will alert Facebook users in the area during the critical first hours when a child has been abducted. The AMBER Alerts will show available details about the child and the abductor on mobile News Feed. It will only show up for those within the designated search areas because they’ll be the ones who’ll be able to provide leads and even help. Of course, you can share the alerts to your friends and family as well.