Facebook’s new Avatars feature lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in chat and comments. Once you personalize your Avatar’s face, hair, and clothes, they’ll star in a range of frequently updated stickers conveying common emotions and phrases. From Likes to Reactions to Avatars, you could see this as the natural progression of self-expression on Facebook.
App researcher Jane Manchun Wong first spotted the Avatars in development over a year ago, and the new designs have a more polished, 3D look compared to their original flat style. They look decidedly less like Bitmoji, Snapchat’s own customizable emoji, which it draws obvious comparisons to. Unlike Bitmoji though, Facebook Avatars won’t yet be able to be integrated into other apps like keyboards, and there’s no feature that lets users snap a photo to get the creation process started. “We want to make sure we don’t show you something totally opposite of the photo. There’s sensitivity around facial recognition,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Facebook is definitely late to the digital avatar game, as Bitmoji have settled in the pop culture lexicon since it launched in 2014. It’s hard to say whether Avatars will be able to top the offbeat charm of a well-placed Bitmoji one of the best gags on HBO’s Barry is Noho Hank’s use of Bitmoji, cementing his place as the world’s most likeable hitman.
Facebook Avatars launches today in Australia for use in Messenger and News Feed comments before coming to the rest of the world in late 2019 or early 2020. The feature could make Facebook feel more fun, youthful, and visually communicative at a time when the 15-year-old social network increasingly seems drab and uncool. Avatars aren’t quite as cute or hip to modern slang as Bitmoji. But they could still become a popular way to add some flare to replies without resorting to cookie-cutter emoticons or cliche GIFs.
