Facebook’s updating its profile picture feature: Mobile users will be able to use 7-second long homemade GIFs as their main picture on the site. This is gonna be just like that time people complained on MySpace when users changed their background to tiled tie-dye or neon fuchsia wallpaper with animated glitter hearts.
Customisation is fun, but in the wrong hands, it can be extremely annoying. Grounds for blocking, even! But it could add some Vine-style creativity to your Facebook profile, as well. Which is needed since, as TechCruch points out, the site’s over a decade old, and needs to keep pace with Tumblr and Snapchat, where The Youth are quickly migrating.
It’s for mobile only right now, and only for some users that are testing the new feature in the UK and California, coming to the rest of us “soon.” But you can soon hold down a record button and create a 7-second video that will greet whichever creep is Facebook stalking you on loop forever. It can be with sound or without, and a still thumbnail you pick will show up as your profile pic on non-mobile platforms.
Learn more in the video below:
[Facebook via TechCrunch]
Update, 4:53 p.m.: Just a note, you won’t be able to use actual GIF files — just create your own, 7-second videos that resemble GIFs.