Facebook releases diversified emojis

Facebook Messenger is making an effort to promote diversity.

With its latest update, users can freely choose from among new sets of emojis -- from skin tones to women in great roles.

The new update lets users pick the skin tone of the emojis according to their preferences. They can set a default color for all emojis when the app launches.

Messenger is also introducing female emojis to create a more balanced mix that is more representative of the world.

“Now, using Messenger emojis, you'll see a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer and swimmer for the very first time, and we'll keep rolling these out,” Facebook said in a post.

What’s more, Messenger will feature redhead emojis.

Facebook redesigned over 1,500 emojis and created a standardized set to avoid the broken-looking black boxes or emojis some users see when they receive emojis sent from a different device. The new set of emojis will be the same for all the app users across Android, iOS and other platforms.

“Our characters are consistent every time you use them, no matter what platform the recipient is on,” Facebook said.

The update will also place an emoji picker beside the text composer which will make toggling between regular text keyboard and emoji keyboard much easier. — Kiersnerr Gerwin Tacadena/DVM, GMA News