MANILA, Philippines - Top social networking site Facebook recently incorporated the planned emoticons option for users to stick on their wall posts and statuses.
The US magazine Popular Science said in a report that the popular site "used science" and inspiration from Pixar animation to design "more emotional" versions of smiley icons to help users express what they feel.
"There’s all this communication that happens when you’re talking to someone face-to-face--you can see that they're nodding and you can see their smile--that is not present when you’re communicating electronically," Facebook engineer Arturo Bejar said in the interview.
While emoticons have long been used in forums, chat interfaces and electronic mail, Facebook only automatically converted character-based expressions such as ":-)" into simple graphic icons in the past.
The new feature now allows users to choose from a wide range of faces and activities represented by tiny cartoons to tag on their posts.
Filipino users, meanwhile, have already started experimenting with Facebook's emoticons to tell their friends about their current moods.
Among the modes of expression online subscribers can add on a Facebook post are location, time, date, image, links, as well as images, videos and a question. - Camille Diola