Facebook, Inc. made a few big announcements this week. Users will be happy to hear that the social giant plans to cut down promotional messages that appear on Timelines, as well as implement an improved Facebook Search. Even more exciting is Facebook’s revelation that it’s working on an artificial intelligence that warns you about posting potentially embarrassing photos on your Timeline.

And the company still has more up its sleeves.

Trending launching on Android

Earlier this year, Facebook launched Trending, a new product that aims to make it easier for users to discover timely and relevant conversations about the news or topics they are most interested in. Now, the social giant is expanding Trending from desktop to Android devices, and it comes with new features as well. Trending will launch first for Android users in the U.S., and the release for iOS and other countries is expected to roll out soon.

Tapping on a topic in Trending on your mobile device will deliver conversations in up to five different sections: Articles shows you news coverage; In the Story features posts from individuals who are part of the story; Friends and Groups shows you what those in your network are saying; Near the Scene reveals posts from people close to where the action is unfolding; and Live Feed shows a real-time stream of reactions from individuals around the world.

The feed below the new sections will continue to display relevant posts ranked by engagement, timeliness and other factors, according to Facebook. And, posts you’ll see on Trending are only those that have been publicly posted and posts that you are in the audience for, such as updates from friends or groups that you belong to.

New tools for publishers

Content publishers continue to search for new ways to create viral posts to drive more traffic to their sites, but over-posting content continues to be an ongoing issue. To help media publishers deal with this and other similar issues, Facebook launched a new set of tools that promises “better targeting” and and “more intelligence” for publishers.

The tools include four features: Domain Insights allows publishers to see when their content has been shared by others; Interest Targeting, which pushes articles to smaller subsets of followers, works similarly to targeted advertising; Post End Date aims to reduce the number of people seeing out-of-date posts in their feeds by allowing publishers to set a date and time for when an article stops appearing in News Feeds; and Smart Publishing helps publishers learn more about how posts go viral.

“What we’re accomplishing is empowering our publishers to understand their audiences better and adopt a refined way for how they publish and distribute content [on Facebook]. It’s about allowing them to maximize the audience they reach on Facebook,” Facebook’s director of global media partnerships Andy Mitchell said in a “Business Insider” interview.

Facebook and Amazon’s surprise!

Amazon launched an app called Surprise! that allows users to easily send personalized e-cards to anyone. These e-cards can contain special messages, as well as gift cards, to make them more meaningful for the receiver. The app launched just in time for the December holiday madness, and if you need a last-minute gift, this is a nifty way to save the day.

An extremely useful feature of the app: You can integrate your Facebook account to Surprise! to create your own Occasion Timeline filled with the important dates you need to remember, including birthdays, anniversaries and other events you need to attend.

photo credit: abulhussain via photopin cc