After taking a short hiatus, The Week That Was is back in full force, bringing a roundup of the best, most awesome, and on occasion downright shocking PR and digital stories from around the globe!

Kick–starting TWTW, we’re going straight to our old friend Facebook, whose weekly news is never too far from the Arabian Bytes radar. This week they bring us not one, but two great pieces.

Facebook in organ donation push

That’s right, in a push to increase the number of organ donations, the NHS and social networking site Facebook have joined forces to encourage people to sign up and become organ donors. People are now able to register through Facebook to become organ donors, which simultaneously shares their wishes with friends and family.

The UK policy director at Facebook, Simon Milner, told the BBC:

“This is an exciting new way to use the power of social media to reach a huge audience and encourage people to think about it, act, and share that information.”

Full story here.

Facebook introduces “action links” to interact with your favourite apps

Facebook this week introduced “action links”, a new feature for apps posting on Facebook Timeline. Designed to allow people to interact and engage with Timeline content in a deeper way, “action apps’ allows space for multiple capabilities and actions.

According to Facebook:

“Starting today, there’s a new way for people to interact with your timeline app directly from Facebook: action links. These customizable links provide another way for people to do something within your app when your Open Graph stories appear in news feed, timeline, or ticker.

For example, when someone checks in on foursquare and shares it on their timeline, friends can already like or comment on the resulting post through the links that appear as part of the story. Now with action links, foursquare added another link – “Save this Place” – that enables people to save a place to their foursquare to-do list directly from Facebook.”

See full story from The Next Web.

Recent events raise the bar for media in region

According to Khaleej Times, recent uprisings and events in the Arab world have had a twofold positive effect on regional media platforms by simultaneously encouraging the quality of news reporting, and driving engagement on digital platforms.

As quoted in Khaleej Times, Maryam bin Fahad, Executive Director of Dubai Press Club, stated

“In several markets directly affected by the political uprisings, the structure of the media industry is virtually being overhauled with a significant break from the past. However, the pace of media reform in these markets is likely to be gradual with the pressing economic and political issues being taken up as immediate priorities.”

See full story here.

Finally, Forget Emoticons — Skype Wants You to Use ‘Humoticons’

“Because nothing can replace the look on your face” according to a Skype blog post.

Skype’s latest campaign has seen the launch of a new Facebook app which allows you to replace favourite emoticons with, you guessed it, your face!

These Skype “Humoticons” will allow people to replicate their smiley faces, sad faces, confused faces, and so forth.

See full story here.