If you’ve noticed more friends posting colorful status updates and more descriptive emoticons in comments, you’re not alone. Facebook announced Wednesday that it is adding more support for emoji — a standardized set of emoticons and picture characters.
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In the past few months, Facebook has been using the status update box to ask about users’ favorite Halloween candy and to inquire about their holiday plans. Now it’s taking that process to the next step, as TechCrunch reports that Facebook is testing emoticons within the status update prompt. Now when users say that they’re feeling happy or chowing down on pasta, they can have smiley faces or forks accompanying their posts, and detail more specifically what they’re doing.
Users asked for it, and Facebook has responded. The social network announced Thursday that the native applications for iOS and Android devices now include a share button. Both apps also got an upgrade Thursday, with emoticons coming to Apple and better photo tagging coming to Android.
