Today, Facebook has begun offering a “reactions” feature as an extension to it’s like button, in which users can access five additional animated emoji with which to express themselves. When you scroll through your feed, it’s still the Like button you see on every post – the rest are hidden beneath that long press.
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But Facebook will not differentiate between the responses to determine a user’s interests when it places ads and other posts in a customer’s news feed. “I don’t need to show all my emotions all the time, but I sometimes want to like or dislike what people are saying”.
The person whose post you’re liking will then be notified of this “reaction”.
Facebook will use “Reactions” to track user behaviour and for ad delivery.
As to where the much asked for “dislike” button is, Facebook Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page that he wanted to “keep the experience simple and respectful”.
Facebook ultimately chose these six reactions for their universal appeal – something that could be understood around the world.
What do you think of Facebook Reactions?
Eventually we hope they become first class citizens of Facebook’s user interface, and a better visual hint on the still-all-important “Like” button would help this.
So now, with Reactions, “It will take more time from everyday life”.
Armed with this kind of information, it’s clear why Facebook would emphasize positive “reactions” and limit negative ones to what are basically the “I statements” of emoji-as in, “I feel sad” or “I feel angry”, as opposed to “you suck”.
Facebook has been testing alternatives to “like” in about a half-dozen countries.
A happy bias? Facebook has a complex formula for deciding which of your friends’ posts are more prominent.
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“We will initially use any Reaction similar to a Like to infer that you want to see more of that type of content”, Facebook said in separate blog post. Maybe “sad” and “angry” cover some reasons why we might dislike something, but they aren’t the same as an option that allows you to say something straight-up sucks.
