It has been what? A little over a year now, since news surfaced that Facebook is going to give us more than its trademark ‘Like’ button.
There were talks of a ‘Dislike’ button being introduced, but somewhere along the line that idea quickly became a bad idea. It does not take a genius to see how fast things will go south with the ‘Dislike’ button. Facebook would quickly become like Reddit with up-votes and down-votes; trolling and cyberbullying will have a field day and the platform would be less enjoyable for most users.
So yesterday, Facebook rolled out emoji ‘Reactions’ apparently to every user globally (though not available in Kenya and there reports that Hong Kong too doesn’t have them).
You can find the emoji when you hold down the ‘Like’ button on mobile or hover the arrow over the ‘Like’ icon on the desktop. You get an expanded menu with up to six different animated emoji ‘Reactions’; Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry.
Yes, you can still ‘Like’ a post when you deem it appropriate, but in those moments where a Facebook friend something sad like the passing away of a loved one. Now you can get more ‘Reactions’ to show you empathize with that individual. Perhaps a ‘Sad-emoji’ reaction would suffice, and it is definitely better than ‘Liking’ the post.
For those posts that piss you off, you can select the ‘Angry-emoji’, those that makes you laugh you got the ‘Haha-emoji’ and so on and so forth.
“We heard from people that they wanted more ways to express themselves on Facebook,” said Sammi Krug Facebook product manager.
“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.”
As you may have noticed, to get the emoji you need to press and hold the ‘Like’ button on mobile or hover your cursor over the ‘Like’ button on desktop. During the development phase of these emoji reactions, there were some concerns housing emoji behind the ‘Like’ button will make it difficult for users to find them.
However, Facebook says that users who already had the ‘Reactions’ enabled discovered them behind the ‘Like’ button and were frequently using them. The rolling out of these emoji has also seen an increase in engagements on Facebook; something advertisers and investors are looking forward to learning more about to determine how people react to their ad posts.
It would appear people were rooting for that ‘Dislike’ button, and they are disappointed that Facebook ‘chickened-out’ bringing it. People are also saying that the Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry emoji reactions are great, but more needs to be added; as can be seen in the picture below. Someone is suggesting the types of emoji that would give users a richer experience as far as expressing yourself on Facebook using emoji goes.
