Facebook is introducing a new raft of better, and more diverse, emoji.
The tech company said the move is its attempt to "make emojis more representative of the world we live in".
"Emojis have changed the way we talk to each other and people love them!" wrote the company in a post. "In fact, nearly 10 per cent of mobile sends in Messenger include emojis."
"However, 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. Nor are they living up to the gender and skin tone diversity that we see in our world everyday."
The new roll-out will include a number of updates. Firstly, emoji will become standardised, meaning the same images will show up the same on any device - no more blank boxes on certain devices.
The second, and perhaps more significant, update is related to diversity. More than 1,500 new emoji will be available on Messenger, in what Facebook call "gender-agnostic and multi-coloured options".
"We're diversifying the genders to create a more balanced mix that's more representative of our world," it explained.
In reality, this means you can add a female police office, runner, pedestrian, surfer and swimmer, with more updates to follow.
You'll also be able to pick the skin colour you prefer, with an option to set a 'default colour' when you launch Messenger after the update. After this, your emoji will follow your colour preference.
The idea of introducing more diversity into emoji is not new. A presentation by a group of Google employees to Unicode, which make emoji, in May this year, suggested there should be more professional representation for women. In March, a proposed change would allow skin and hair colour to be altered for all emoji.
In April last year, LGBT emoji were introduced, and in February of the same year, racially diverse emoji were added to the Unicode alphabet.
But some groups feel as if Facebook could go further.
"It’s disappointing that in 2016, the 1,500 new emojis aimed at increasing diversity are distinctly lacking disabled people," Rosemary Frazer, campaigns manager at disability charity Scope told WIRED.
"There is only one disability emoji – the wheelchair user sign. This one symbol can’t represent me and the disabled people I know."
"To truly represent the world we live in, disabled people should be included in a way that reflects the diversity of our lives."
“With this summer’s Paralympics fast-approaching, we should be seeing more positive, powerful representations of disabled people across the media and social media.”
All of the emoji can be seen here.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
