Facebook Messenger Gets 1,500 New Emojis in Diversity Drive

Facebook has launched a ton of new emojis for Messenger. The company has introduced as many as 1,500 new emojis that include better representation of women, and more skin tones.

Before this update, Facebook used to hand down the basic emoji palette with the default yellow skin tones. However, now the company has added the different skin tones feature approved by Unicode Consortium. Unicode Consortium is the authority that coordinates the development of standard emojis.

The new emojis bring better representation of women, and the new set now includes a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer, swimmer, and many more. It even introduced emojis representing red heads. Facebook asserts that more such emojis will be rolled out in the future as well.

The skin tone feature brings the option to select which skin tone suits the users preference, choosing from five options apart from yellow. Once selected, the skin tone will be made default for that emoji from then on. However, users can go to Settings and change their preference at any time. The Messenger composer on all platforms will include an emoji picker on the left, and better toggle between the regular and emoji keyboard.

Another welcome change that Facebook has introduced is standardised emojis on all platforms. "Messenger is addressing emoji woes by rolling out a new set of standardized emojis so you can be sure you're sending the right message. No matter what emoji you pick, it will now look the same for all Messenger users, regardless if the recipient is on Android, iOS or another platform. In other words, no more broken-looking black boxes or emojis that just don't make sense. Our characters are consistent every time you use them, no matter what platform the recipient is on," the company explains on its Facebook post.

Facebook reveals that 10 percent of messages sent through Messenger via mobile are emojis. A team of Google employees had recently proposed to Unicode Consortium to include 13 new emojis representing professional women in different industries.