Facebook is poised to get a lot more expressive. Today it began tests of a new status composer that lets you select “what are you doing?”, and share an emoticon of different activities such as feeling, reading, listening, or eating. You can then select from media and emotions or add a custom text description to share something like “Niners in the Super Bowl – feeling ecstatic “

This new visual activity sharing status composer could inspire people to share more frequently. It follows Facebook testing a bunch of new standard status update prompts like “What’s going on, Josh?” and the somewhat creepy “How are you feeling, Josh?”

Visual status updates could help Facebook fend off emoji messaging apps like Line, media consumption sharing apps like GetGlue, and the smiley-laden Path.

Along with being fun for users, it could be a big help to advertisers. By selecting your current activity instead of merely writing it out, you structure data for Facebook. That could help it to connect you with advertisers who want reach people who frequently watch tv and movies, or listen to music, or eat at restaurants.

Facebook didn’t provide many details but noted:

It’s just a new way for people to visually represent what they’re doing and how they’re feeling through their Facebook posts. It will only be available to small set of people. This isn’t integrated into Graph Search. It’s just a small test to see if people are interested in sharing their actions in a more visual way.

I think it could be very popular, as it will make people’s status updates stand out in the crowded feed.