Facebook

It has the full teen trifecta - sexting, cyberbullying and strangers - in one unmoderated public forum that anyone, of any age, can access.

Facebook's chief operating officer Chris Cox has revealed five new emoji buttons - Angry, Sad, Wow, Haha and Love - will be launched worldwide in the next few weeks.

The traditional "Like" button will still appear at the bottom of posts. If the user holds down the button on a smartphone, the five emoji options will be revealed.

For years, science has said that the limit is about 150.

Has Facebook - or other social networks, for that matter - managed to change anything? Can the Internet help us maintain more friendships?

An Oxford anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist who is one of the leading experts on those questions decided to take a look.

Soon you won't need an internet connection in order to see what's going on in your friends' lives as Facebook tests offline News Feed updates.

The new offline/slow connection mode will give users something new to read even when in a signal black spot by showing previously downloaded but unread content from your friends' feeds.

Just like its online News Feed, the offline mode will rank posts based on their perceived relevance, meaning you won't simply be subjected to that random guy from work's inane chatter and breakfast snaps.

The world's largest social network is testing a new feature that will enable its 1.5 billion users to use their smartphones to shoot video so other people can see what they are doing as it happens.

Facebook began testing the live video option Thursday among a sliver of its U.S. audience with iPhones. The Menlo Park, California, company didn't specify when everyone with a Facebook account and a smartphone will have an opportunity to broadcast live.

The idea is to make it easier for people to donate to charities without leaving Facebook. Nonprofits can now create project or theme-based fundraising campaigns with set donation goals. Users will be able to send money in just a few taps, provided they've already stored their card information on Facebook.

Facebook's also rolling out a shiny new "Donate" button that can be added to both pages and posts, so people can donate without even leaving their News Feed.

Facebook introduced two new features aimed at local business advertisers: an easier way to automatically add information via the Locations tool, and local insights.

The Locations update is available globally through Facebook’s ads application-programming interface, with Power Editor coming on board shortly, and local insights are rolling out to pages in the U.S. “starting today and over the coming weeks.”

That, in turn, is a tiny, insignificant dot within their vast universe of information about their billion-plus users.

The change means that many older posts will now be added to results when people search for news or information.

The move is being seen as part of Facebook's attempts to keep people on the site rather than go elsewhere to keep up to date with events.

It said options were available for people that did not want their older posts to be more widely accessible.

Bigger audience

Facebook is going "Inside Out" on the Like button, adding a range of new emotional reactions to the iconic thumbs-up icon it launched in 2009.

You won't see the new emoji right away unless you live in Ireland or Spain, the two locations the Menlo Park, California-based social network chose to begin testing them on Friday.

But Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer, says in a post that the company plans to use the feedback from the test run to make improvements, with the hope of launching the buttons globally "soon."