October Treats in Messenger: Halloween Art, James Bond Soundmojis and New Expression Tools!
The spookiest time of the year is just around the corner. To help you creep it real this season, we’re treating you to new, eerie-sistable features that will help you and your friends better express yourselves in your Messenger and Instagram DM conversations, including new Halloween artwork, chat themes, soundmojis and suggested word effects.
Like nutmeg adds depth to pumpkin spice lattes, emojis add complexity and nuance to conversations. We recently introduced word effects, a way to pair words with the emojis that have meaning to you and your friends. While you’ve probably added Halloween 🎃 word effects to your chats, delightful experiences shouldn’t be limited to special holidays or inside jokes. Today, we’re introducing suggested word effects to easily add a fun emoji cascade to everyday words and phrases you’re already using in your chats. Now, when you send standalone messages like “goodnight,” “congrats” and “jk,” you’ll see an option to create a word effect for that term, including a suggested emoji pairing like 😴, 🎉 and 😛. Suggested word effects are rolling out to people using Messenger on iOS devices starting today and will be available on Android in the coming weeks.
There’s no better time to channel James Bond than the season of mystery and intrigue. We’ve added two new 007 soundmojis that will help Messenger fans relive two of Bond’s most iconic lines. Whether you’re in line to see “No Time to Die” in theaters or reminiscing about your favorite movie moments afterwards, just tap the smiley face in your Messenger chat, click on the loudspeaker icon and select the 🍸 (“Vodka martini; shaken, not stirred.”) or 🤵(“The name is Bond. James Bond.”) emoji to add a little Bond charisma to your chats.
Halloween is all about creative self expression, so give your chats a costume change with one of the three chat themes released this month. Put your mind at ease with our Care chat theme, venture into the dry, sandy landscape of our Dune chat theme, or explore a ghostly new galaxy with our “Spooky Space” Halloween chat theme.
But wait, there are more treats waiting for Halloween lovers of all ages! Get ready to let the ghoul times roll with fun holiday artwork from Messenger and Messenger Kids.
On Messenger and Instagram, explore four haunted worlds – a ghoul-inhabited labyrinth, a bustling robot hive, a ghost-filled nebula (coming Oct. 23) and a misty planet filled with sinister flora (coming Oct. 30) – through our AR effects. People on Messenger can also try out the Halloween 360 background and sticker pack created by Eva Cremers.
Kids can get into the Halloween spirit by decorating photos with bewitching frames and seasonal stickers, adopting a new virtual pet ghost and dancing aboard an alien spaceship with a new AR effect on Messenger Kids. The stickers and frames are available today; the virtual pet and AR effect are coming to the app next week.
Shared Experiences
Wanna stay indoors this season? Well, we’ve got you covered with the latest episode of “Cardi B Tries____” where Cardi learns how to help two love birds tie the knot with the help of Raven-Symoné just in time for National Coming Out Day.
To check out this touching episode with your friends on Messenger or on Messenger, simply start a video call, tap the media button in the bottom right on Instagram, or swipe up to access the menu on Messenger, select ‘Watch Together’ and search for “Cardi Tries___” . You can also view the episode on Facebook Watch, here.
From the Messenger crew, we wish you a Happy Howl-oween 🎃👻