Remember the heady days of Livejournal, when your emo post about how much your parents don’t “get” you was only complete with an accompanying song and mood, the latter of which could be entered by choosing from a surprisingly robust menu of descriptive emoticons? Facebook, it turns out, certainly remembers those rosy days of yore, and is intent to bring back the emoticon feature to your very own status box.
TechCrunch reports that Facebook is testing “visual sharing,” which would allow users to share what they’re feeling (emotions!), reading, watching and eating, all with accompanying emoticons. Users can input a traditional status update (“Facebook attention fulfills me in a way nothing IRL does”) and then append their mood or activity, which is accompanied by an emoticon (“Feeling unbearably alone”).
TechCrunch points out that should the feature roll out to every user, it could be an easy way for Facebook to determine what users like to help serve more relevant ads. So if you add that you’re “Listening to Bright Eyes,” it can show you an ad for your old Livejournal account.
For now, Facebook says this is just a small test and the results aren’t incorporated into graph search, so feel free to get as emo as you want.
Jessica Roy is the editor of Betabeat and a tech writer at the New York Observer. Follow Jessica on Twitter or via RSS. jroy@observer.com
