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Facebook Rooms gains push notifications, activity dashboard, 50+ Like button sounds and more

Facebook Rooms, the social networking giant's latest attempt at Reddit-like anonymous posting app, received new capabilities Tuesday morning in the first feature focused update following its App Store debut a month ago.

In addition to performance improvements, Rooms 1.1 now has an Activity dashboard, will send you push notifications when somebody posts to a room you’re in and lets you choose among 50+ new custom sounds for the Like button.

You can now adjust focus and lighting of photos in Facebook Messenger

Facebook on Thursday issued a small update to its Messenger app for the iPhone and iPad, bringing out additional features to touch up the photos you take within the software using the built-in camera feature.

Now available in the App Store at no cost, Facebook Messenger 16.0 fixed an issue with sending messages while introducing a pair of new controls to adjust the focus and lighting of photos you take in the app.

New Facebook Groups app goes live in App Store

Facebook on Tuesday announced a brand new iPhone application, now available at no cost in the App Store. Dubbed Facebook Groups, the 54-megabyte download promises to give you a dedicated space for you and your groups and make it easy to discover and join new groups, post photos and links, or create your own.

For those wondering, Facebok Groups are like forums on the Internet. Anyone can create a group covering specific topics.

For example, families can create closed groups to share family photos, organize vacations and more. Or, your team could use Facebook Groups to post updates and schedules, your school or neighborhood may have set up a Facebook Group and so forth.

Facebook Groups is available free in the App Store.

WhatsApp updated with support for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

The Facebook-owned cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp has updated its iOS client today, bringing the app to version 2.11.14. The team says the new version fixes bugs and crashes, as well as adds support for the new iPhones.

The app now looks great on the larger display of the iPhone 6, and the larger, higher resolution display of the iPhone 6 Plus. WhatsApp, which Apple labels as an App Store "Essential," was one of the few remaining top tier apps to update.

Facebook@Work being worked on

Using Facebook in the workplace could soon become the new normal thanks to a new business product Facebook is said to be currently developing.

Dubbed Facebook@Work, the forthcoming service should permit users to collaborate on projects and connect with professional contacts through group chats and document collaboration with co-workers, three people familiar with the matter told The New York Times newspaper Monday.

As first mentioned by The Financial Times on Monday, Facebook began working on the project years ago, lead by a team based in the firm's London offices. They're currently testing Facebook@Work externally with a handful of outside companies and expect to roll it out “within the coming months.”

You can now ‘Say Thanks’ with Facebook’s personalized video cards

Facebook on Wednesday introduced 'Say Thanks', a new service allowing its members to create and send personalized video cards to their friends and family on the service.

To make a video for a friend, just visit facebook.com/thanks. Upon choosing a friend, the service will generate a preview of your personalized video card. Limited customization features are available, allowing you to change a theme of the video< edit photos and posts that represent your friendship and write a personalized message.

How to use Facebook profile pictures for your iOS contacts

I have dozens of contacts in my iPhone that don’t have a picture attached to them. Sometimes, I’ll get a band’s information at a show and will even forget who they were months later. Pictures always help in situations like these. I’m better with faces than I am with names.

For a while now, Apple has included the ability to merge your friends’ Facebook information, including updated profile pictures, to your contacts in iOS. It only takes a few seconds and we’ve got a short tutorial for you below.

Facebook Messenger passes half a billion users

Facebook's dedicated instant messaging application for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, Facebook Messenger, is now used by more than 500 million people around the world each month, said the social networking giant Monday.

That's a massive number, but still half of what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said constitutes a platform in the truest sense.

By comparison, WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in February 2014 for $19 billion, currently has more than 600 million active users. Instagram, another Facebook property, counts more than 200 million users.

Facebook introduces new ways to customize your News Feed

As part of an ongoing mission to improve its News Feed experience, Facebook today announced that it has built and updated a few tools to help you customize the content you see everyday. These tools are located in the News Feed settings menu (More > Help & Settings, on mobile).

Of course customizing your News Feed is all about controlling who you see posts from. Starting today, you'll be able to quickly unfollow and re-follow people, Pages and Groups. Unfollowing of course means you're still friends with the user, but will no longer see their status updates.

Mark Zuckerberg explains why you had to download Messenger as a separate app

Facebook took a lot of heat back in July when it disabled messaging from the main Facebook app, forcing users to download the standalone Messenger app if they wanted to keep using the social network to send direct messages to friends and family. To most people, the move went vastly misunderstood, and it didn't help that the company stayed mum about it. At least until now, because in a Q&A session earlier today transcribed by The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally addressed the issue. The reason? It's all about removing friction.

You can now preview stickers in Facebook’s latest Messenger update

The social networking giant Facebook on Wednesday pushed a small update to its Messenger client for the iPhone and iPad which lets you preview sticker animations.

Facebook Messenger 12.0 (what's up with version numbers, Facebook?) allows you to press and hold down on a sticker to expand it and view any animations before sending it.

The app is available free in the App Store.

Facebook app update makes it easier to share multiple photos

Facebook announced a new update for its mobile clients today, bringing the iOS app to version 16.1. The update brings about a new workflow that will make it easier for users to post multiple photos to the popular social network from their smartphones and tablets.

Using the Facebook app, you can now choose the exact order of photos when uploading them via iPhone or Android. Once you've selected the images, you'll see a preview of how the "story" (interesting that Facebook calls it that) will appear after its been posted.