Facebook Introduces Emoticons To Status Updates

After the relative failure of status update prompts, Facebook has begun rolling out new options for users who want to tell their friends how they feel. The new feature could prove to be beneficial for Facebook marketers, as users can also update their status with activities.

Some users in the United States of America have been given the option to add emoticons to their status updates. There are a number of emotions to choose from, each illustrated by a round yellow face, similar to the ones used on Skype.

To choose an emoticon, users have to click on the smaller section separated from the main status update text box which asks “What are you doing?”. A drop-down box will appear, the first option of which is “feeling”, providing users with a number of different smiley face emoticon options.

Users don’t just have smiley faces to choose from, there are also a number of tiny pictures emblematic of different activities. For example, if a user selects “eating” from the drop-down box, they can choose to display an ice cream cone if they are eating ice cream, or a slice of pizza if they are snacking on a hot piece of quattro formaggi.


As well as the “feeling” and “eating” options, users can choose from “drinking”, “watching”, “reading” and “listening to”. Users can name the films, TV shows, books and artists they are enjoying, which could potentially provide Facebook marketers with extremely useful targeting data.

Chosen artists, films, TV shows and books will appear in the status update as a picture (if one is available), a description and a link to the corresponding Facebook page. Users who want to know more about a band that their friend is listening to can just click on the link in the status update.

Facebook is currently testing the new feature, so it is only available to a few users in the United States. Whether people will be more willing to share their feelings in image form is yet to be seen, but Facebook do intend to roll out the feature to the rest of the United States soon. There is no news concerning international users, so those of us living outside America will have to be without for the time being.

What do you think of the new emoticons?