It didn’t turn out to be a dislike button though. The new options will allow users to express empathy beyond the formerly all-encompassing “like”, which users frequently complained felt like a freakish reaction to posts involving sad news, such as a death.
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Facebook’s new emojis were introduced Wednesday, allowing users to express a range of emotion beyond the iconic “Like”. It sent surveys to some users, conducted in-person focus groups and monitored the Facebook reactions that users typed in most often. For mobile users, you simply have to hold down the Like button, after which a popup menu provides access to Reactions.
The rollout follows years of debate about the seven-year-old “like” button, which in many ways revolutionized social media. You also won’t be able to use the reactions on comments, so if you’re hovering over the “Like” button under a comment, nothing’s going to happen.
Each reaction comes with an animated emoji, such as the thumbs up for “like” and a heart for “love”. “We wanted these reactions to be globally understood”.
Users in Spain and Ireland have been using the emoticons since a year ago as part of the company’s research. Facebook has integrated a new feature that lets you be more expressive.
In case you haven’t seen them before, they are (from left to right) Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry.
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“I think you’ll see other social networks try to come out with similar features to catch up and stay in the game and try and get people to love them as much as they love Facebook”, he said. Well, if you post a photo of your outfit before you head out for the night – thinking you look really good – and people start responding with the sad emoji, then you might want to get changed. You’ll need to make sure you have the latest version of the Facebook app to see the Reactions feature on mobile.
