Christopher Wellbelove DL

The home screen is filled with your friends latest update, and then as you use your phone messages and other interactions jump into whatever you are doing.  For instance, you are looking at a news website and one of your mates messages you on Facebook – this will jump into what you are doing. 

A picture taken from their ‘Avatar’, which is the image on their profile picture, will appear together with their message. This picture will be retained wherever you go within the phone until you either respond or choose to swipe them away.

‘Swiping away’ friends that you don’t want to deal with, is an interesting concept, however even more interesting is how this will this work when a friends profile picture is not them.

For example the hugely successful marriage equality campaign which resulted in millions of profile pictures being changed around the world to images supporting the campaign – resulting in many of your friends all looking the same.

The more successful these campaigns are in getting people to change their profile – the more difficult it will be for you to identify who is calling or messaging you via, as Facebook calls them, Chat Heads.

There are other friends who may choose to replace a picture of themselves with a comic representation, their kids or even something unconnected such as a park bench. 

These ‘Chat Heads’ are a great idea, and I look forward to checking this out – however we may all need to rethink what we choose for our profile pictures or risk not being recognised and our messages being ignored.