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This is a guest post Henrik Larrson.
Despite on-going security concerns, Facebook continues to be the destination of choice for today’s internet surfers, announcing that it had reached 500 million users in July of last year. The goal of making Facebook a web within the web seems to be working for Zuckerberg and friends, and the company is increasingly being seen as a threat to Google, the original web darling. As the popularity of the site has grown, so has use of its chat feature, despite the lack of features that users of IM clients like Microsoft’s Live Messenger and Yahoo’s Internet Messenger have come to expect.
Despite the lack of features, Facebook chat is growing in popularity because of the popularity of the social network to which it belongs. Connecting with friends is simply easier using the Facebook chat feature because all of your friends can typically be found there. You also don’t have to bother keeping up with your friend’s contact information yourself, since your friends keep all of their information up to date for you, making staying current one less bother. And so Facebook’s chat feature continues to grow in popularity despite the lack of features.
To combat the lack of features and general “basic” feel to Facebook chat, users are turning to third-party developers who are supplying the features that Facebook seems to be intestinally ignoring. To make upgrading your Facebook chat experience a simpler proposition, we’ve rounded up and rated the top five Facebook emoticon add-on’s for Facebook chat for you.
Our ranking is based on ease of use, the number of options, and the creativity of the Smileys each of the developers is offering. Here are the winners of our Top Five Smiley Apps for Facebook:
Emoinstaller for Facebook
Website: www.emoinstaller.com
Our first place winner is a handy little program called Emoinstaller. Emoinstaller is easy to download and install, comes bloatware and malware free, and supports Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome browsers. Athena IT Limited UK, the software’s developers, has done a great job of combining ease of use with some seriously creative Smileys.
The software automatically integrates with Facebook chat, and to add a Facebook smiley all you need to do is click on “Emo,” the mascot for Emoinstaller, and choose from close to a thousand Smileys in one of more than a dozen categories. (You’ll enjoy “Bad Girls” and “Bad Boys” and the ability to insert an AK-47 can be particularly fun.)
The second place winner is a little program called Facebook Emoticons. If you’re not sure what to say, say the developers, consider adding an emoticon instead. As advertised, the program lets users insert emoticons into the chat window fairly easy, and the program supports all of the major browsers. While the range of emoticons available through Emoinstaller isn’t there, this simply program does exactly what you want it to do.
Third place in our Smiley round-up goes to a program called Facebook Smileys. It meets our criteria of being easy to install and supports the major browsers, but it does work in a slightly different way than our other entries. To insert a smiley into Facebook chat using Facebook Smileys users can enter the “code” for the smiley directly into the chat window. Users who are already familiar with “Smiley Code” may like this feature, but if you don’t know the code for a frown you may not want to learn.
You’ll probably enjoy one of winners above, but we’ve also included two others just in case:
1st Runner Up: Facebook Smileys
Facebook Smileys will meet your needs and can be used on all major browsers. It is also bloatware and malware free.
Honorable Mention: Smiley Central
Smiley Central goes at adding smileys to Facebook from a different direction, installing an icon directly into your chat browser.
Pick the program that works for you and enjoy the added fun that Smileys can bring to your Facebook chat experience.
Disclosure: Henrik wrote this guest post to promote Facebook emoticons and EmoInstaller. He did not request to have a by-line and mentioned that he would love for readers to check out the links in the article to the different types of Facebook Emoticons for Facebook Chat.
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