it’s the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, counting from the airing of the first episode of the original 1966 Star Trek series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Facebook is marking the occasion, in a few different ways. First, there’s a personalized greeting appearing atop News Feeds of users who’ve liked or otherwise interacted with Star Trek or sci-fi content on FB, and there’s also a special custom profile frame you can apply to your primary display pic. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, there are redesigned reaction emoji inspired by key characters form the series.
Messenger marketing lead Lindsey Shephard shared Facebook’s various celebrations in a Medium post today, including a gallery (which you can see below) of the step-by-step process FB’s creative team went through in order to produce the stunning papercraft USS Enterprise they used to create their customized creating artwork.
The best part really though are the new reactions, which include custom version of the Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry reaction options Facebook users can employ to quickly respond to posts. FB’s choices for source material for these range from Star Trek’s original show to The Next Generation, meaning fans from both of these bitterly divided camps of Trekkers can enjoy (but depending on their level of commitment, TNG purists can only express sadness, anger, and love whereas original Trek aficionados have access to anger, humor, love and astonishment).

All Star Trek celebratory content is available to US and Canadian users, only for a limited time, and only if you managed to get into that bucket of FB-identified Star Trek fans. I am a fan, but alas, not fan enough to see these features yet. Ah well; Instruments register only those things they’re designed to register. Space still contains infinite unknowns.
