Facebook Will Now Allow Animated Profile Pictures

So, instead of the old boring snapshots, you can now show off exciting parts of your life on your profile to anyone who visits it. The feature is somewhat similar to Twitter’s Vine or Apple’s Live Photos, the only difference is that it deals with your visible online avatar. Three main features have been officially unveiled by the social networking website today: Profile Video, more control over your profile and a new revamped mobile user interface. Facebook has started allowing users to replace their profile pictures with videos.

A Facebook blog post stated: “On News Feed and profiles, we’re seeing people create and view more videos than ever before”.

You can check if your profile received the update by heading to your Facebook profile on mobile. Today we’re starting to test the next step in an obvious evolution of profiles: “profile videos”, Facebook Product Managers Aigerim Shorman and Tony Hsieh wrote. Profile pictures are not just static portraits.

“We’ve seen a lot of people “hack” their profiles to show bits of their personality like nicknames, and we wanted to give people a new, freeform space at the top of the profile to do that”, a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying. Those who want to support a sports team or charitable cause for a specific week, for example, can choose a picture to display for a short time period.

Facebook’s also introducing temporary filters for profile photos. Easy, just check him out on Facebook, you don’t even have to speak to him. Lastly, you’ll be able to access and change who can view what on your profile via a setting located in the top right corner of your profile page.

The social network is introducing the feature on its mobile app for “a small number of iPhone users in the United Kingdom and California” and says it plans to roll it out to other markets in the coming months. If you’d like to be spontaneous and record your own video profile picture immediately, click on “Take a new Profile Video”, but if you’d like to use one you made earlier, select “Upload Video or Photo”.