Ever had that awkward moment when your friend “Likes” a post that shouldn’t be “Liked” in the first place? Yeah, the times where you’ve just announced you’re jobless or gone through a bad break up. I received it too on other posts that would never be socially acceptable to “Like” but now my friends will be able to react with five other ways.
Apparently folks in seven countries have been Facebook’s lab rats, testing the extended “reactions” with positive feedback going all around. It took Facebook a good year but at least, there will be less misplaced positive vibes and more emotionally appropriate reactions as it launches across Android, iOS and browsers.
How will you get to see these new reactions? Just hover over the “Like” button and it’ll expand to show the other reactions, that includes: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. Notifications coming in too will change, with it stating someone has “reacted” to a post rather than just “liked” a post.
The research that went into fundamentally deciding which reactions would make the cut went as far as looking at people’s one-word reactions on posts (yes, Facebook was spying on us). They also looked at the feelings most displays through their sticker options.
Launching a feature across all 1.44 billion active users will take more than a couple of days but be on the lookout for a new update for those on Android and iOS. Users on browsers will just have to patiently wait, as the desktop updates usually just happen gradually.
When Engadget asked why “dislike” wasn’t on the list Facebook’s Product Manager had this to say “It would have been too binary”. He adds that the whole point of adding reactions was to make expressions multi-dimensional.
We all would appreciate a “dislike” button would we not?
Here’s one just for the sake of it!
