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Facebook Messenger’s face recognition tool rolls out to everyone outside of Canada and the EU

Facebook Messenger

Image Credit: Paul Sawers / VentureBeat

The releases keep on coming for Facebook’s Messenger service. Today the social networking company has announced that it has added new features designed to help you share more during the holiday season. Starting today, Facebook has made its Photo Magic face recognition tool available globally (except for those in Canada and in the European Union) to help ensure that you can send the right photos to the right people.

Previously only available in Australia, Photo Magic will scan through your camera roll and recommend photos to send to your friends. The wider release of the tool is well-timed, as people will likely take more photos with their family, friends, and colleagues during the holidays. And while it can be a hassle to sort through photos and send them to the right people, especially if there’s a large group, Facebook believes that Photo Magic will streamline the process and help you quickly share those moments through its Messenger app.

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For those who have access, you can enable it under the Settings menu in the app (Facebook will also prompt you to try it out when you open up Messenger). From there, just snap a photo using the device’s camera — you don’t have to do it within any Facebook app — and then Photo Magic will do the work. It’ll send you a reminder to share the photo, but it won’t be distributed until you tap the “Send” button.

Other Facebook holiday news includes ways to make conversations more customizable. Company executive Stan Chudnovsky alluded to this earlier today in a Facebook post: Now you can personalize your experience, including setting nicknames, choosing colors for your conversations, and more. The company said that it’s interested in having its more than 700 million monthly active users make the service their own.

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Oh, if you’re a fan of stickers, then you’ll be happy to know that Facebook now lets you affix Santa Claus, a Christmas tree, or any other holiday decoration to your conversations. Yes, the holiday sticker pack and emoji set have arrived, including one around the Disney movie Frozen.

Android app users will get a special treat as the company has brought back its snow globe effect for chat heads. When having a conversation with a friend, their avatars will appear as winter wonderlands, but will transform into confetti-filled chat heads once the new year arrives.

Today’s news comes just after the announcement that on-demand car service Uber (and soon, Lyft) has been integrated with the Messenger service.

Update: This post has been updated to correct the fact that when Photo Magic launched last month, it was on both iOS and Android. The incorrect sentence from this post has been removed to reflect that.

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