Bitstrips: Those Comic Strips on Facebook Explained

Oct. 25, 2013 — -- Your Facebook feed might look a bit more cartoonish these days. No, Facebook hasn't redesigned its News Feed again, but there is a very good chance your friends have started to post images like the one above, making your modern news source look a lot like an old-style newspaper comics page.

So, where the heck are all these colorful sketched ladies and men coming from? A Facebook mobile app called Bitstrips.

The app isn't exactly new -- the company launched its Facebook app in December 2012 -- but it just released its iPhone app at the end of September and updated it earlier this week, along with its Android app.

And Bitstrips seems to be catching on.

App Data, a website that tracks app downloads, today listed BitStrips as the top downloaded app in Apple's App Store and in the Google Play Android store.

And making a Bitstrip through the apps or Facebook couldn't be easier. If you're on your phone, sign in with your Facebook username and start designing the cartoon version of you. Give yourself a good hair style, put on some makeup (if that's your thing), adjust the size of your face if you like, and then pick out an outfit.

Once your avatar is good to go, you can choose from a number of difference comic scenes. You can adjust the text below and even invite a Facebook friend to co-star in your comic strip. Once you've perfected your image, you can post it on Facebook, or if you're on your phone you can save or share the image on another service.

One of the aspects that seems to make the service so addicting is that there are more than 1,000 comic templates, and the company adds new ones every day. Good luck trying to pick the perfect scene to match what you want to say.

Easy as Bitstrips seems, some of the reviews in the app store warn that the app can be buggy, and in our testing Friday morning we had a hard time getting the app to post to our Facebook account or even show the comic templates. Bitstrips did post on its Facebook page that it was "performing some routine maintenance."

Bitstrips did not respond to ABC News' request for comment on the problems and when they would be resolved, but given the number of colorful and bubbly comics appearing in Facebook feeds, we'd say the troubles aren't standing in the way of turning News Feeds everywhere into comic pages.