Goodbye generic emojis, hello personalised avatars! As of this month, Facebook is trialling its brand new Facebook Avatars feature in Australia. These Bitmoji-style stickers can be customised to create a virtual lookalike of yourself in comments, chats and posts.⁣

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“There’s been a ton of work put in to this from the product and design perspective to find out, with how many people on Facebook, how to make this as representative as possible,” explains Facebook Avatars communication manager Jimmy Raimo. From religious clothing to a full spectrum of skin tones and hair colours and styles, Facebook is making an extra effort to ensure no demographic is left out. “They’re a bit more realistic,” adds Raimo, “so they can be your personal avatar rather than just trying to look cute or cartoony.” ⁣

The feature is expected to roll out across the rest of the world sometime later this year, and hopefully no later than 2020.

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While we’re at it, let’s quickly cover some of the other updates we’ve spotted this week! 👇⁣

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Ad Account Filtering

⁣Facebook has updated its filters so that we can now separate ad accounts depending on their status and ownership. If you’re someone who owns several ad accounts and helps run dozens more (like us!), this filtering system can be a huge time-saver.⁣

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Improved Comment Ranking⁣

⁣Facebook’s improving its comment ranking system so that the comments you see on popular public are the ones you actually WANT to see and not, say, an endless list of people tagging their friends. The aim of this improvement is to promote more meaningful conversations between people across the platform.⁣

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And that’s all for now, folks! Which update are you most interested in? We’re VERY excited for the Avatars to roll out! 🤓