Facebook rolls out new diverse emoji for Messenger
Facebook is seriously upping its emoji game.
The company updated Messenger on Wednesday with more than 100 new emoji characters "to better reflect gender and skin tones," Facebook also updated its existing emoji so that all its emoji will appear exactly the same across Messenger, regardless of device or platform.
Messenger's new emoji picker will now allow you to pick different skin tones for emoji characters, just like the emoji keyboard on iOS (Android is set to get a similar emoji update with the release of N later this year.) You can also choose a default skin tone you want to use automatically (though you can still choose a new skin tone each time you use a character.)
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"Not all platforms have kept up with emoji standards as they've evolved - which means sometimes the emoji you wanted to send wasn't the one that showed up," the company wrote in an update on Messenger's page. "Nor are they living up to the gender and skin tone diversity that we see in our world everyday."
By standardizing its emoji, Messenger users will no longer see different emoji (or those black boxes) based on the device they're on. Since iOS and Android render emoji differently, characters appear differently on both devices and Android users were previously unable to see some emoji that iOS users could see.
The update also adds more than 100 entirely new emoji characters, meant to bring more diversity to Messenger's emoji set. There are now more female emoji characters, including a female police officer, runner and swimmer; as well as " gender-agnostic options and multi-colored emojis."
Red-headed emoji characters will also be included in Messenger for the first time and Facebook says it will continue to make more diverse emoji available over time.
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Topics Facebook
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
