Facebook avatars have gone through several changes over the years as the company has updated the look and features of these personalized digital representations. The most recent update rolled out in 2019 brought some of the most significant changes avatars have seen.
The History of Facebook Avatars
Facebook first introduced avatars in 2008 as a way for users to represent themselves on the platform beyond just profile photos. The initial avatars featured very basic cartoonish designs with limited customization options. Users could choose between a handful of different hairstyles, outfits, and facial features.
The first major overhaul to avatars came in 2012. This update provided users with much more detailed customization tools, allowing them to better reflect their real-life appearance. There were thousands of new hair, clothing, and accessory options. Facebook also introduced the ability to share avatars as stickers in News Feed posts and comments.
Minor upgrades were made over the next few years, including additional skin tone options, but the avatars largely remained the same cartoonish style. They still paled in comparison to the level of personalization offered by Bitmoji or Apple’s Memoji, which were gaining popularity around this time.
The 2019 Redesign
In 2019, Facebook rolled out its most radical avatar revamp to date. The updated avatars switched to a much more realistic and lifelike art style with more detail in facial features and expressions. They also introduced far more diverse customization choices.
Here are some of the biggest changes that came with the new 2019 Facebook avatars:
- Art style shifted to more realistic, 3D likenesses.
- Hundreds of new customization options including makeup, piercings, hearing aids.
- New facial features like wrinkles and defined muscles for more personality.
- Additional diverse skin tones, hairstyles, and accessories.
- Ability to make an avatar look more masculine or feminine.
- More choices for body shape and size.
- Hand gestures and detailed facial expressions.
- Animated avatar stickers.
Overall, the revamped avatars allowed for much more personalized designs that users could make look just like themselves or an idealized version of themselves. The level of customization and realism was now on par with Snapchat Bitmoji or Apple Memoji.
Why Did Facebook Make This Change?
There are a few key reasons why Facebook likely decided the time was right in 2019 for a top-to-bottom redesign of their avatar system:
- Competing with other apps’ avatar features
- Reflecting greater diversity
- Leveraging improvements in AI and facial recognition
- Driving engagement with interactive avatars
Let’s explore each of these factors:
Competing with Other Social Apps
In the years leading up to Facebook’s avatar update, personalized digital avatars were exploding in popularity and quality on competing social platforms like Snapchat and Apple’s iMessage.
SnapchatBitmoji, launched in 2016, allowed users to create cute cartoon avatars that captured their likeness. These Bitmoji could be used as chat stickers and in augmented reality.
Apple’s Memoji, introduced in 2018, took personalized avatars to a new level. Using advanced facial and object recognition technology, users could create Memoji that realistically looked just like them with customizable hair, makeup, piercings, and more.
Facebook’s dated cartoonish avatars simply couldn’t compete with the Bitmoji and Memoji avatar features that were proving extremely popular with Gen Z users. The 2019 redesign brought Facebook’s avatars back up to par and made them appealing rather than outdated.
Reflecting Diversity
One of the biggest issues with Facebook’s original avatar system was a lack of diverse customization options that prevented many users from making avatars that reflected their real appearance.
As society became more aware of issues around representation and inclusion, Facebook faced growing criticism over the homogeneous look of its avatars. Most options catered to white, able-bodied users with limited diversity in hair, skin tone, body type, disabilities, and other attributes.
The 2019 update attempted to remedy this by introducing thousands of new appearance choices including:
- Dozens of diverse hairstyles like afros, fades, hijabs, curls, braids
- Expanded skin tone options
- Face shapes and features representing different ethnicities
- Hearing aids and wheelchairs
- Prosthetic limbs
- Body shape choices like height and weight
While there is still room for improvement, the new avatar features reflect a step toward better representing the diversity of Facebook’s user base.
Leveraging AI and Facial Recognition
Another key driver of the new avatar design was major improvements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and facial recognition technology since Facebook’s original launch of avatars.
In 2008, the capabilities of AI were still fairly limited which constrained avatar customization options. Over the next decade, breakthroughs in deep learning and neural networks opened up new possibilities for highly-detailed computer graphics and facial recognition.
Facebook was able to leverage these AI advancements to allow people to easily create avatars with lifelike facial features and expressions modeled after their own appearance and movements. The technology enhancements also enabled creating avatar stickers that can be animated based on a user’s motions.
The new avatar system shows how Facebook is applying its leading machine learning research to improve products and user experiences.
Driving Engagement
The rise of personalized avatars on other social platforms like Snapchat demonstrated that avatar creation tools can drive user engagement, especially among younger demographics.
Younger users enjoy expressing their identity through digital avatars and using these avatars for messaging and social interactions. Snapchat and Apple capitalized on this demand.
By overhauling its outdated avatar system to be more customizable and interactive, Facebook likely aimed to tap into this engagement potential as well. Offering stickers, comments, messaging, and other creative uses of avatars provides new ways to keep users active on Facebook.
Early data showed promising results, with over 1.5 million people customizing new avatars within the first 48 hours after launch. Facebook has continued expanding avatar uses like virtual dressing rooms, which points to avatars being an ongoing engagement focus.
The Outcome of the 2019 Redesign
Now a few years removed from the 2019 update that brought Facebook avatars into the modern era, the results have been largely positive:
- Hundreds of millions of people have created personalized avatars.
- Users are expressing themselves through diverse and inclusive avatars.
- Avatars are integrated across Facebook and Instagram for stickers, comments, Stories, profiles, and messaging.
- New AR, AI, and VR capabilities continue to be added, like virtual dressing rooms.
- Avatars have become a popular way for brands to engage with customers.
While there are still ways avatar customization and uses could improve, the revamp has essentially achieved Facebook’s key goals:
- Made avatars competitive with those from Snapchat and Apple.
- Increased avatar diversity and representation.
- Boosted user engagement through creative new features.
- Laid the foundation for future avatar innovation and applications.
Going forward, we can expect Facebook to keep building on avatars given their popularity and potential. Other apps like Twitter are now following their lead by adding custom avatar features as well.
It’s clear the 2019 changes brought Facebook avatars back from the brink of irrelevance and turned them into another engaging way billions of people connect and express themselves online.
Conclusion
Facebook’s 2019 avatar revamp introduced much more realistic and diverse designs, customization options, interactive features, and sharing capabilities. This massive overhaul was driven by the need to compete with other apps’ avatar innovation, represent diverse users, leverage AI advancements, and boost engagement. Years later, hundreds of millions of people are now expressing themselves through personalized avatars on Facebook and Instagram in ways that simply weren’t possible before the redesign. Avatars seem primed to continue evolving as immersive digital spaces like the metaverse grow. The 2019 updates laid the groundwork for Facebook’s avatars to remain relevant and compelling in the years ahead.