Do’s and Don’ts With the New Facebook Avatars
I hate rolling out. I am really. When a company announces some great new feature but omits the phrase “deployment” in the description, I can’t tell you how annoying I am. Invariably, this means that I have to wait a week or more to try something, while everyone I know gets their special access before me.
Facebook recently announced that it is releasing new Mii avatars for everyone, and while I didn’t have to wait a month to get them, the debut of these avatars was a bit messy. First, it was a “launch” when Facebook announced how to get an avatar, which, as far as I know, still doesn’t work for everyone:
“To create your avatar, go to the Facebook or Messenger comment editor, click the smiley button and then the stickers tab. Click “Create your avatar”! “
I tried this last night when all my friends were posting their avatar images and I didn’t see any way to create them at all. Problem? I searched on Messenger, which still doesn’t have an Avatar button – at least not for me and not for everyone whose phones I’ve checked. It seems that the creation of avatars is still limited by Facebook itself.
If you go to comment on a Facebook post (iOS or Android) and tap the emoji icon at the bottom of the screen, you should see a new purple icon that looks like this:
Tap it and you can start the process of creating your Facebook avatar, which you need to set aside a little time as there are more customization options than you might expect.
To me? I’ve never seen this little updated icon in my Facebook comments because I don’t really use stickers. Instead, I was able to create my avatar when I saw all my friends share theirs on the Facebook thread. The delight of remarks flow is to put a large “Make your own avatar” banner over the contribution of each, and by clicking on which the creator jumped into my avatar.
I have created an avatar. Now what?
At least that’s how I felt: I created my own avatar, which then allowed me to post funny little stickers as comments on people’s Facebook posts. What then?
While I can also post these stickers as comments via the Facebook website on my desktop or laptop, there is no way to edit my avatar outside of the iOS or Android app. (To do this, you either use the Edit Avatar link when trying to use the sticker, or click on the three-line icon in the bottom right corner of the Facebook app to open the settings, then click on More> Avatars. It’s also a handy way to create your own avatar. if you can’t find any other hints to get this process started.)
I still don’t have avatar stickers in Messenger, which is a curious omission. The whole gist of a virtual self-representation that you can use on Facebook seems a little underdeveloped, if you can’t even send your friends “YESSSSS!” through a commonly used chat application. You also can’t just take a picture of your avatar doing something in your own Facebook post; You will need to comment on an existing post with an avatar sticker.
You can use avatars in your Facebook Story posts. Again, though, you can’t just put your avatar image in the sticker, which does something funny. Instead, you will have to place the avatar stickers in a standard post with music, boomerang, mood or selfie, which will make them much better, especially when you stretch the sticker with your fingers and become a giant: