SAN FRANCISCO At Facebook, mere "sharing" is getting old. Finding deeper meaning in online communities is the next big thing.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is no longer satisfied with just connecting the world so that people can pass around baby pictures and live video or fake news and hate symbols. So the Facebook founder wants to bring more meaning to its nearly 2 billion users by shepherding them into online groups that bring together people with common passions, problems and ambitions.

Much like the creation of Facebook itself arguably the largest social-engineering project in history that shift could have broad and unanticipated consequences. Facebook will apply the same powerful computer algorithms that make its service so compelling to the task of boosting membership in "meaningful" groups to more than a billion people within five years.

If successful, that would also encourage people to spend more time on Facebook, which could boost the company's profits. While Facebook doesn't currently place ads in its groups, it said it "can't speak to future plans." Advertising is virtually Facebook's only source of revenue; it brought in almost $27 billion dollars in 2016, 57 percent more than the previous year.

The shift comes as Facebook continues to grapple with the darker side of connecting the world, from terrorist recruitment to videos of murder and suicides to propaganda intended to disrupt elections around the world. For Zuckerberg, using his social network to "build community" and "bring the world closer together" two phrases from Facebook's newly updated mission statement is a big part of the answer.

"When you think of the social structure of the world, we are probably one of the larger institutions that can help empower people to build communities," Zuckerberg said in a recent interview at the company's offices in Menlo Park, California. "There, I think we have a real opportunity to help make a difference."

Zuckerberg outlined his latest vision at a "communities summit" held Thursday in Chicago. It's the company's first gathering for the people who run millions of groups on Facebook, a feature the company rolled out years ago to little fanfare. Facebook is also rolling out new administrative tools intended to simplify the task of screening members and managing communities in hopes that will encourage people to create and cultivate more groups.

Facebook groups are ad hoc collections of people united by a single interest; they offer ways to chat and organize events. Originally conceived as a way for friends and family to communicate privately, groups have evolved to encompass hobbies, medical conditions, military service, pets, parenthood and just about anything else you could think of.

To Zuckerberg, now 33, the effort to foster meaningful communities reflects his recent interest in ways Facebook can make the world a less divisive place, one that emerged following the fractious 2016 presidential election.

He has previously talked about the need to bring people together in both a lengthy manifesto published earlier this year and during his commencement address at Harvard University last month.

Data-driven to its core, Facebook has quantified "meaning" so it can be sure people are getting more of it. And what Facebook aims to maximize is the time people spend in its online groups. Whenever someone spends at least 30 minutes a week in a group, Facebook classifies it as "meaningful." The company estimates that 130 million of its users are in such groups; it aims to boost that to over a billion by 2022.

Facebook has already been tweaking its algorithms to recommend more groups to users. Those changes have increased the number of people in "meaningful" groups by 50 percent over the past six months, Zuckerberg said a testament to the power of algorithms on human behavior.

Of course, anything that keeps people coming back to Facebook also gives it more opportunities to learn about their interests and other personal details that help it sell advertising, according to analysts.

"It's really simple economics: If users are spending time on Facebook, they're seeing more ads," said eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson. "Increasing user engagement is a necessity for Facebook."

Virtual communities "can fill a fundamental need we have for a sense of belonging, much like eating or sleeping," said Anita Blanchard, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who's studied them for 20 years.

Her research has also shown that online communities can make people less intolerant of opposing viewpoints. "They get you out of your own clothes and make connections across the U.S., making you realize you can get along with people with different beliefs," she said.

For Sarah Giberman, an artist and parent who lives in Arlington, Texas, a meaningful group is one "that serves a need in your life, that fills some space that would otherwise feel vacant."

"I spend a lot more time on Facebook because of the groups than I would otherwise," she said. "Especially with the current sociopolitical climate, I'm not comfortable being very open in my regular newsfeed."

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Facebook pushing users toward groups - nwitimes.com

A video clip posted this month on YouTube and other sites shows a wild condor, having just flown down from the sky, walking toward and embracing a man in a very moving way. It is capturing attention worldwide and raising some intriguing questions about animal behavior.

According to the text accompanying the video, the man a cattle rancher named Edgardo, who lives in Loncopu, Argentina discovered the condor on his patio at home back in March. The bird, then an infant, suffered from a leg injury and had somehow become separated from his parents. Edgardo cared for and fed the condor, who recovered and flew off, but who returns to his rescuer regularly.

Edgardo can be heard in the clip greeting the bird enthusiastically then remarking "it has been a while" since the last visit. When the footage was posted on Facebook by the organization Breathing with Peace, this comment was included: "Without forgetting the man, the animal always visits his rescuer in gratitude."

I found the video clip quite wonderful to view, because in it I see the result of human kindness and the genuine mutual affection between bird and human.

Going beyond affection, though, is the claim of gratitude by the bird a reasonable one?

Condors are vultures, a type of raptor. As it happens, just a week ago I spent a fantastic afternoon observing the rescued raptors and interacting with environmental educators at the Vermont Institute of Nature Science in Quechee.

I sent the condor video clip to VINS environmental educator Anna Autilio, who had shown me around last week (she is also a friend). I remarked to her by email that I didn't think the behavior shown by the condor was the result of imprinting, because the bird had left the man for the wild; I asked if she thinks that gratitude could be a possible explanation for the condor's behavior.

Autilio replied:

"The big thing is, I don't see why we would rule out imprinting. According to the description in the video, this man rescued the bird when it was 'a baby.' Does the condor now breed, that is, have a condor mate and raise condor chicks? Or does the 'frequent' visitation imply that this bird has taken Edgardo as its mate and will remain in the general vicinity hoping one day Edgardo will lay an egg? Is it unable to recognize other condors as mates because it was raised by a person? That would be the sad part.

The condor is definitely soliciting neck rubs. In the wild, this would be allo-preening between mates, a ritual done after mating, as a greeting, or during a changing-of-the-guard at incubation. You can even see the condor nibbling Edgardo's shirt and hands as he may be trying to reciprocate the neck rub, or demand more.

Gratitude is not a word I would use it implies the condor knows Edgardo was responsible for its healing. But does the condor feel extreme affection for Edgardo? Yes!"

(I learned my lesson some time ago in always seeking a bird expert when trying to interpret bird behavior.)

What we're left with, then, is a clear indication of emotion felt by the condor, but too many unanswered questions to point toward gratitude.

The condor video is only the tip of the animal-gratitude iceberg. Media stories of the "rescued whale says thank you" variety are pretty common, including this famous one from back in 2005 in which rescuers disentangled a humpback whale from crab pot lines in the waters off California.

After being freed, the whale moved through the water with exuberance. This behavior alone might well be an expression of joy or relief, having nothing directly to do (from the whale's point of view) with the rescue divers in the water. Some of the behavior struck the rescuers as intentionally directed towards them, though, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"When the whale realized it was free, it began swimming around in circles, according to the rescuers ... it swam to each diver, nuzzled him and then swam to the next one."

Because I work on animal emotion, experience tells me that suggestions like this are often met with charges of anthropomorphism even regarding big-brained mammals. Yet, let's break it down a little.

Expressing gratitude requires the cognitive ability to link an event (an individual animal's being helped in some way) to the agent of that event (the person or other animal who carried out the help). Based on what I know of cetaceans, elephants, and non-human primates, I believe this capacity probably does exist in individuals of some species whose survival depends on being able to make complex learned associations or, in some cases, to take the perspective of others.

In an article published earlier this year in Greater Good magazine, Malini Suchak reviews experiments with apes and monkeys showing that they engage in reciprocity, or the returning of favors in such a way that might well indicate they are grateful to their social partners.

In one experiment, for instance, chimpanzees were given a food-related task that required a partner to perform:

"The chimpanzees were more likely to help another chimpanzee in need of a partner if that chimpanzee had also helped them in the past. Reciprocity seemed more important than friendship and skill in their choices."

(A new chimpanzee study reported just last week adds even more evidence that reciprocity is crucial in chimpanzee dynamics.)

Suchak concludes:

"Although we are not yet at the point where we can 'speak chimp' well enough to understand their expressions of gratitude, the behavior of our closest relatives certainly suggests that we humans are not alone in the importance we place on gratitude. The research suggests that, in all likelihood, our propensity for gratitude really does have deep evolutionary roots, and it will be up to us to find out how deep they go."

In his book The Bonobo and the Atheist, primatologist Frans de Waal recounts expressions of gratitude in chimpanzees also, including a historical one involving Wolfgang Kohler, whom de Waal describes as "the German pioneer of tool use."

"Two chimps," writes de Waal, "had been shut out of their shelter during a rainstorm when Kohler happened to come by and found the apes soaking wet, shivering in the rain. He opened the door for them. But instead of hurrying past him to enter the dry area, both chimps first hugged the professor in a frenzy of satisfaction."

That phrase "a frenzy of satisfaction" strikes me as fitting for explaining what the condor in Argentina does with Edgardo, too. Perhaps that is enough as a takeaway message, along with, of course, the strong positive difference that human compassion toward other animals can make.

Barbara J. King is an anthropology professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. She often writes about the cognition, emotion and welfare of animals, and about biological anthropology, human evolution and gender issues. Barbara's new book is Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

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Video: What Is This Wild Condor Doing? - NPR

President Donald Trump, center, speaks as first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence listen at the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, June 22, 2017. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption

President Donald Trump, center, speaks as first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence listen at the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, June 22, 2017.

Moments into his highly anticipated on-camera briefing Wednesday the first after a seven-day absence Trump press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the persistent rumor that he will soon transition into a new role within the White House communications team one that removes him from the spotlight and into a less visible position.

He opted for an indirect response to a very direct question: "I'm still here."

But, he added, "It's no secret we've had a couple of vacancies including our communications director who's been gone for a while. We've been seeking input from individuals as far as ideas that they have. We've been meeting with potential people that may be of service to this administration."

To say that the Trump administration has "a couple of vacancies" is an understatement. Although that may technically be true for the beleaguered, combative and sometimes flummoxed communications team, a slew of leadership positions across an array of departments remain unfilled five months into Donald Trump's presidency. To put it in perspective, using data culled by the Center for Presidential Transition and reported by the Washington Post, by this point in his first term, President Obama had confirmed 151 top political appointees, whereas Trump only has 43 in place.

It is not that the White House is not trying to fill the posts. Or that these are not lucrative positions. In fact, the role of press secretary has opened the door to top-dollar broadcasting deals for many of Spicer's predecessors. Ari Fleischer, who served under President George W. Bush, and Jay Carney, who served under President Obama, both ended up at CNN. Robert Gibbs, another Obama alum, joined NBC News and MSNBC as a contributor, while Dana Perino, who was on President George W. Bush's staff, left the White House for Fox News where she remains as the co-host of The Five.

But amid the investigations, low approval numbers, and notoriously capricious nature of the president it's been challenging for the White House to lure takers.

So perhaps it is time for the Trump administration which has promised to run the government more like a business to remove the political from "political appointees" and ask, "How does an organization entice top-tier talent when it is embroiled in chaos?"

In other words, WWHRD: What would human resources do?

It turns out hiring and recruiting experts have a lot to say on the subject, including Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton Business School where Trump took a handful of undergraduate classes and director of the Center for Human Resources.

What Trump or his advocates should be doing, according to Cappelli, is appeal to a perspective employee's sense of patriotic duty and self-interest.

Here is his pitch: "You're serving your country. The job won't last that long. Administrations don't go on forever, but afterwards, you will be more valuable."

At the end of the day, he added, that is the kind of offer employers, regardless of industry, should make whenever they're courting an in-demand candidate.

Ultimately, Cappelli argued, "it's a pretty good bet for somebody to take over an organization that everybody knows is in big trouble and that expectations are really low."

It would help for interested yet tentative applicants to think of the troubled company as a "sinking ship."

"If you get on board it and it sinks, nobody blames you," he laughed. "If it's sinking and something nice happens and it turns around you get all the credit!"

But he cautioned that there is such a thing as a company that is too far gone. Remember Enron? If somehow a jobless executive had been bamboozled into taking a job at the energy giant when it was already mired in lawsuits and fraud charges, there would be no way to recover professionally.

He called walking into that situation "a losing proposition." One in which it is "more likely you're going to be tarred by the brush."

Cappelli suggested the most well-suited type for a job at an organization in crisis and under a boss who is unfazed by completely reversing course on any given endeavor, is someone with a military background. "People who are used to accepting direction and executing orders for the good of the greater mission," he said. And perhaps, most importantly, "they're used to falling on their swords for superiors."

But Rom Brafman, co-author of the best-selling book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, disagrees with that analysis and believes the opposite is true.

The candidate most likely to thrive under these circumstances, Brafman contended, is one who is flexible and creative because they can more easily adapt to unforeseen changes. For someone like this, he continued, chaos is a terrific trigger for innovation.

"Chaotic systems have gotten a very bad rap," he said.

A mercurial boss could be a great thing, he advised. "If somebody's telling you that one day something is good and one day something is bad, that creates the opportunity to go with either direction."

He said the benefits of unstructured systems are two-fold: unlike a structured organization, one that is in turmoil is more tolerant of deviations from the norm and, even in cases where they may not be officially condoned, a motivated worker-bee can typically go unnoticed and on task while the rest of the hive buzzes around trying to save their own jobs.

So, why then, aren't more start-up types clamoring to work for the new administration? Brafman's answer is what behavioral economists call it loss aversion. It is the idea that "losses generally have a much larger psychological impact than gains of the same size."

His example involves finding a hundred dollar bill. That would bring most anyone a certain degree of joy, but psychologists have found that losing the same amount of money is two and half times more upsetting.

That, he explained, is what is preventing talented and potentially interested applicants from throwing their hat in the Trump White House's ring. They are more fearful of being tainted by the administration's reputation or the possibility of failure than the unknown possibilities of success.

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What Would Human Resources Do?: Some Advice For Trump As He Recruits And Staffs Up - NPR

Columbia Pictures

We asked experts ranging from body-language specialists to evolutionary biologistsand the answer might surprise you.

Male-to-male greeting in America takes many forms. Theres the classic handshake. The fist bump. Dap. The head nod. The you-too-huh? shrug from across a baby shower.* But as the world of masculine salutations takes on new layers of complexityreaching its most evolved form in Clevelandthere is one fixed practice that remains something of a universal truth: When hugging, two (usually) heterosexual men will almost always pat each other on the back.

Start paying attention, and youll see it everywhere. We cant help it, as if it were a particularly pernicious tic or social crutch, like constantly checking your phone during dinner or hitting a vape. And though the most commonly accepted explanation is truethat a not insignificant part of it is born out of the admittedly primitive heterosexual norms that deem tenderness among males not masculine (more on that to come)there must be some deeper anthropological basis for slapping another guy on the back. And, according to experts, there is!

But first, we need to set the table: Why do we even hug?

*Honestly, I've only heard that this happens. Ive never been to a baby showerhavent even held a baby, while we're being open with one another. Seems like too much risk (dropping it) for a non-reward (holding a baby).

As forests receded, we were no longer forest-dwelling apes but upright hominids on a plain," says Mark Bowden, human-behavior and body-language expert. "We can now see a distance, and so we need clear signals that somebody is a friend or a predator. So open body language and open palmsimagine hands up, that big surrender gesturesomebody can see two miles away that you're not a threat."

This Look, Im not going to stab you with a spear measure is especially important to establish when the hominids happen to own penises.

Testosterone makes people more risk-tolerant," says Bowden. "So you will get more aggression the more testosterone [there is], not because the testosterone is making somebody more aggressive. What it's doing is lowering the idea of there being a risk in the first place [So] groups of males, on the whole, [have] a lot of behaviors to countermeasure the possibility of aggression.

And what's the best behavior to countermeasure the aggression when those two miles become no miles, and you're now faced with that guy you saw in the hazy distance 20-some minutes ago, across the plain? Sure, a handshake might work. But theres actual value in doing something more intimate to quash any suggestion that you're going to smack him with a cudgel and steal his collection of exotic sabertooth furs, like hugging. Take it from Richard Wrangham, who works in Harvards Department of Human Evolutionary Biology (and who e-mail-answered my strange request for comment after six zoos declined).

There is a general principle involved in animal alliances, such as male-male friendships in primates: If two individuals are to express feelings of mutual solidarity, the reliability of the signal is greater if it is genuinely somewhat stressful. For example, male baboons who like each other but want to be sure about each other's feelings touch each other's genitals: If A can do that to B, and B doesn't snarl back, A can be truly confident that B likes him.

[This theory] suggests that males would basically prefer not to pat or hug, because such close physical proximity is ultimately somewhat stressful (given that it is potentially dangerous to be so close to someone who could be a secret rival). However, the stress is worth tolerating if it leads to confidence in each other's feelings about each other.

All right, so we hug so that we know who the real ones are. And we do it in a very specific way, says Bowdenwith open palms around the shoulder blades. The open palm not only indicates the absence of a weapon, but the flat hand on skin is going to cause levels of oxytocin to go up, which will actually cause more of a connection. (And the upper back is very well-protected, versus the belly or sensitive small of the back, both of which would make you feel far more uncomfortable and intimate.)

I think what it's about is two males being able to show vulnerability, but not in so vulnerable a way that if there was attack or real aggression, they'd be in trouble, says Bowden.

The pat has that little of physical roughness to it, which is also consistent with men, says Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist who has a B.A. from Harvard, a master's and a Ph.D. from Princeton, and teaches at Columbia Business School and Kellogg School of Management. Men wrestle with each other. It has the unique masculine quality of rough play, with the distancing behavioryou're saying, I'm being intimate, but I'm not crossing the line into being too intimate. Over time it starts to feel like a "uniquely special male thing," and the hug then becomes a ritual.

But the pat! The pat can be used for a signal of release, adds Bowden. A lot of primates have this tapping out behaviorduring play-fighting, that's the I'm done. Let's not move this into the realm of actual grappling. Pat pat pat, and now we're out. Let's not prolong this too long. If you prolong it, there's risk of further intimacy or aggression.

Go get your bro and hold him close.

The pat is part physical foolishness and part signal of an embrace's terminationand it's now fully ingrained in male-greeting liturgy.

However, any form of greeting is not just about the two parties involved. Bowden argues that a gentle pat among friends, both visible and audible (the slight sound of hand-on-back), indicates to the surrounding groupwhether that be a bunch of primitive, aggressive cavemen gathered around a carcass on the African plains or a bunch of primitive, aggressive cavemen at a Patriots gamethat the newcomers hands are empty, and he is benign. Of course, sometimes the newcomer doesn't want to be benign. He will try to manipulate the optics of what should be a harmless exchange into some weird dick-swinging contest, an attempt to signal to the herd who the one true Daddy is. This type of toxic insecurity is also, unfortunately, where the homophobia creeps in.

Youre trying to figure out the tribal-social norms, says Bowden. What is the normality for a heterosexual man to be intimate with another heterosexual male? And how can you make sure that you, as the tribe, dont overstep those boundaries? Galinsky refers to these boundaries, too, saying the pat is an integrative solution that allows men to hug each other while not doing anything that would make the tribe uncomfortable. The need to establish heterosexuality ties back to the play-fighting/grappling aspect also: Look at us! Just a couple of dudes, roughhousing, being guys! And when you really overdo it...well, you just might be overcompensating.

You could see some extremes of quite big, aggressive play behavior in groups of males that want it very much to be known to themselves and others, Look, there's nothing homosexual going on here," says Bowden. "Now, we could drill into all kinds of reasons why they might want it to be very, very obvious. There's one school of psychology that says they're very unsure. They want to make it very physically clear, because psychologically they're a little bit on the boundary.

But, guys: It's 2017! Can we really not be tender with one another, without fear of feeling emasculated or castigated? Maybe it's time we update our tribal norms. I love a hearty back pat as much as the next guy, and if it's to signal the end of an embrace or a means of physical buffoonery among friends, that's cool. But if it's because you're afraid of a little physical affection? Leave that type of limited thinking to the monkeys, man. Go get your bro and hold him close.

"Once we become aware of this, it actually helps us understand where we stand with people or how we feel toward them," says Galinsky. "And it gives us a really powerful tool to increase the intimacy. If this is someone that I know that I always hug this one way, and I wanted to be more connected to them, what if I hugged them a little bit differently the next time? Would that actually help our relationship?"

You'll never know until you try. Just...probably don't grab him by the genitals, baboon-style.

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Why Do Guys Always Have to Pat Each Other on the Back When They Hug? - GQ Magazine