Facebook Introduces Reactions: No Dislike Button Yet
Facebook Introduces Reactions: No Dislike Button Yet
Back in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted that Facebook was working on more buttons apart from the normal Like button — which many assumed was a new Dislike button (which is actually very desirable) but came in the form of different emoji expressing different emotions such as anger, sadness, and laughter. Four months later, Facebook has released another statement saying these emojis are coming to Facebook with the next update.
Unfortunately not everyone is getting the emoji goodness because Facebook is testing it in just two markets for the mean time –Spain and Ireland- and if the reception is favorable, we might get more countries added.
Quoting Facebook’s director of product, “The reason for those two countries? it’s because both have largely national user bases without extensive international friend networks, so they work better as closed test groups. Ireland is English speaking, while Spain lets Facebook test out how well the wordless emoji play with non-English users.”
The new Facebook emoji are quite similar to the Path Reactions which were released in 2012. Some might say Facebook copied Path but it seems Facebook has already filed a patent regarding the new Facebook emoji which are also called Facebook Reactions.
This is nothing new however as many websites already have similar features in place. Websites like the aforementioned Path and even Buzzfeed (one of my favorite websites) give their users more options to react to posts apart from the limited Like and Share which we all agree was getting a little bit old school.
These new Reactions are not limited to either desktop or mobile as they seem to follow you cross platform. From posts by your friends, to pages, to sponsored content, the Reactions are going to stand their ground.
In case you were wondering if these new Reactions were also coming to other Facebook products like Instagram and Whatsapp, they’re not. Again quoting Facebook director of product, “Although you could see how this would make a lot of sense in a product like Instagram, too, for example.”
How does the Reactions work you may wonder. On mobile, tapping on the Like button will bring up all the Reactions for you to choose from while on Desktop, they simply hover every post available in your news feed which you can then tap any one you like. Simple enough.
Why Did Facebook Adopt Reactions?
There were various reasons why the social network decided to evolve from having just one method of reacting to a post…
The most important one is the sheer demand of more options apart from the Like button by Facebook users. The demand was simply too much as sometimes, thumbing up a post might simply not be enough to express our feelings regarding that post.
Another issue is the fact that most Facebook users are now going Mobile.
Facebook responded to the fact that most Mobile users of the social network do not like tapping away at their screens to convey their emotions and will rather opt for stickers.
Facebook director of product, Mosseri, says that as many people were already using stickers instead of text to convey their feelings, it made sense to make the process faster by introducing Reactions.
“Typing on mobile is difficult,” Mosseri says, “and this is way easier than finding a sticker or emoji to respond to in the feed.”
If you own a Page on Facebook, then you should expect Reactions to make its way into your Analytics dashboard. You will now be able to get more detailed statistics about how people feel about your posts and then adjust accordingly. In short, Reactions is going to be a very important tool for many Page owners to interact better with their audience.
Mosseri also said that the team at Facebook considered giving users the option to turn off Reactions but at the end decided not to. Why? Because, according to Mosseri, some users might actually be confused about the option and may conclude that something is broken when trying to use this feature.
What do you think about Reaction? Is it a welcome development or not? Share your views via the comment section below.
Unfortunately not everyone is getting the emoji goodness because Facebook is testing it in just two markets for the mean time –Spain and Ireland- and if the reception is favorable, we might get more countries added.
Quoting Facebook’s director of product, “The reason for those two countries? it’s because both have largely national user bases without extensive international friend networks, so they work better as closed test groups. Ireland is English speaking, while Spain lets Facebook test out how well the wordless emoji play with non-English users.”
The new Facebook emoji are quite similar to the Path Reactions which were released in 2012. Some might say Facebook copied Path but it seems Facebook has already filed a patent regarding the new Facebook emoji which are also called Facebook Reactions.
This is nothing new however as many websites already have similar features in place. Websites like the aforementioned Path and even Buzzfeed (one of my favorite websites) give their users more options to react to posts apart from the limited Like and Share which we all agree was getting a little bit old school.
These new Reactions are not limited to either desktop or mobile as they seem to follow you cross platform. From posts by your friends, to pages, to sponsored content, the Reactions are going to stand their ground.
In case you were wondering if these new Reactions were also coming to other Facebook products like Instagram and Whatsapp, they’re not. Again quoting Facebook director of product, “Although you could see how this would make a lot of sense in a product like Instagram, too, for example.”
How does the Reactions work you may wonder. On mobile, tapping on the Like button will bring up all the Reactions for you to choose from while on Desktop, they simply hover every post available in your news feed which you can then tap any one you like. Simple enough.
Why Did Facebook Adopt Reactions?
There were various reasons why the social network decided to evolve from having just one method of reacting to a post…
The most important one is the sheer demand of more options apart from the Like button by Facebook users. The demand was simply too much as sometimes, thumbing up a post might simply not be enough to express our feelings regarding that post.
Another issue is the fact that most Facebook users are now going Mobile.
Facebook responded to the fact that most Mobile users of the social network do not like tapping away at their screens to convey their emotions and will rather opt for stickers.
Facebook director of product, Mosseri, says that as many people were already using stickers instead of text to convey their feelings, it made sense to make the process faster by introducing Reactions.
“Typing on mobile is difficult,” Mosseri says, “and this is way easier than finding a sticker or emoji to respond to in the feed.”
If you own a Page on Facebook, then you should expect Reactions to make its way into your Analytics dashboard. You will now be able to get more detailed statistics about how people feel about your posts and then adjust accordingly. In short, Reactions is going to be a very important tool for many Page owners to interact better with their audience.
Mosseri also said that the team at Facebook considered giving users the option to turn off Reactions but at the end decided not to. Why? Because, according to Mosseri, some users might actually be confused about the option and may conclude that something is broken when trying to use this feature.
What do you think about Reaction? Is it a welcome development or not? Share your views via the comment section below.