Facebook is apparently working on new ways for users to express themselves, and Facebook Avatars could soon bring options similar to Snapchat's Bitmoji.
Social media networks have become part of most people's daily lives, and a slew of features and options keep users engaged. Facebook is one of the most popular social networks worldwide, and it's always testing new features to improve the experience.
To add more ways to express various feelings and states, Facebook first added reactions back in 2016, allowing users to better react to others' posts. Last year, the social network expanded its options by adding GIF support for comments, and now it's taking things to the next level.
Facebook Avatars Coming Soon?
It seems that Facebook is now working on personalized Avatars, which would enable users to create a customized, illustrated avatar of themselves and use it as a sticker, either in comments to various Facebook posts, or in messages sent via Facebook Messenger.
Developer Jane Manchun Wong found hints of the feature hidden in the code of the Facebook app for Android, which means that it's just in testing for now. There's no way to tell when it will be ready for a wide beta test and make its way to the general public.
For now, by the looks of things, it seems that Facebook Avatars is similar to Snapchat's Bitmoji, which wouldn't be all that surprising. Facebook already borrowed various features from rivals, including Facebook Stories and more.
Personalized Avatars On Facebook
The folks over at TechCrunch have reached out to Facebook and the company confirmed that it is indeed working on Facebook Avatars, but the feature is still in the early stages of development.
"Your Facebook Avatar is a whole new way to express yourself on Facebook. Leave expressive comments with personalized stickers. Use your new avatar stickers in your Messenger group and private chats," explains Facebook, as cited by TechCrunch.
It remains unclear, however, just how they will look like, whether they will be dynamic, or whether Facebook will leverage AI and machine vision to create Avatars from photos like the VR avatars in Facebook Spaces.
Either way, Facebook Avatars should add cool new means of expression, with users being able to show their emotions by making their avatar look sad, excited, confused, happy, angry, and so on.
There's no word as to when Facebook estimates to have this feature ready, but we'll let you know as soon as we learn more about these Avatars.
