Facebook Gets More Emotional with ‘Reactions’

Facebook Gets More Emotional with ‘Reactions’

Facebook Gets More Emotional with ‘Reactions’

Facebook Gets More Emotional with ‘Reactions’

 

Capture the loves and wows this week. Facebook is moving beyond just “likes.” The social network giant officially launched its emoji “Reactions” globally on Wednesday.

Starting this week, if you hold down the “like” button on your mobile device or hover over the icon from your desktop, you’ll see an expanded menu of six different emotions to choose. The animated emojis signal love, haha, wow, sad, angry, and like. The new emojis are not meant as a replacement to the infamous “like” button, but to be more of an extension of it allowing users more options to quickly react to posts.

“We heard from people that they wanted more ways to express themselves on Facebook,” says Facebook product manager Sammi Krug. “When people come to Facebook, they share all kinds of different things, things that make them sad, things that make them happy, thought-provoking, angry. We kept hearing from people that they didn’t have a way to express empathy.”

You’ll still receive notifications when your posts receive “Reactions,” just like you are notified about “likes.”

Prior to Wednesday’s launch, “Reactions” had limited availability to Ireland, Spain, Chile, the Philippines, Portugal, Colombia, and Japan. So far, the love emoji has been the most popular “Reaction” across those test countries so far.

“The ‘like’ button is so well used among cultures, we really wanted to maintain that,” Krug said. “The ‘Reactions’ we have here are very applicable across cultures. Reactions is really a step in the direction of being able to feel like you can actually imagine how I’m reacting when you post on Facebook.”

To use, you must have the latest version of the Facebook app to see the “Reactions” feature.

Source: “Facebook No Longer Just Has a ‘Like’ Button, Thanks to Global Launch of Emoji ‘Reactions,’” Forbes.com (Feb. 24, 2016)