Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry. Will You Click Those New Reaction Options On Facebook?

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Feb 25, 2016
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For years Facebook users have been crying out for a “dislike” button, now the social media company is giving users what they want...kind of. Facebook recently rolled out more options other than the ‘thumbs up’ button to react to someone’s post. You can now show love, laughter, sadness, surprise, or anger all by choosing from six different reaction emojis. When clicking one of these corresponding emojis the words love, haha, sad, wow, or angry will pop up in place of the usual ‘like’.

BuzzFeed reports about the new reaction options on Facebook and whether this will help users better express themselves when replying to a friends’ post. Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox explains how the new reaction options will hopefully address users’ need for something other than simply ‘liking’ a post. Cox says, “As you can see, it’s not a ‘dislike’ button, though we hope it addresses the spirit of this request more broadly.”

Having more ways to quickly click a button to react to a post makes sense, especially when you get that weird feeling after “liking” a post about your friend being laid off, sick, going through a divorce, or some other trying time in their life.

The five reactions may or may not be here to stay. Since an earlier Buzzfeed article was published, they removed a ‘yay’ reaction which had a little emoji looking proud, as well as a ‘confused’ reaction. Employees at Facebook will now spend their days waiting and watching to see how users react to the current 5 reaction options. Facebook engineering director Tom Alison explains that there is a lot more innovation in store for the Facebook user. Alison says, “This is just the beginning. The team is still going to be looking at how people are using this. We’re going to be learning a lot. We’re going to be iterating on this.”

So far, the Facebook team has learned that their members are most fond of the ‘love’ button and will choose that over others. But, they are convinced that we will see many more of the options widely used, especially when there is a global event that many users chime in about. Alison explains, “You’re going to see it change dynamically in response to things that are going on.”

What do you think of the new Facebook reaction options?

Do you think you will use these when responding to posts on Facebook or will you stick with the ‘like’ option?

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sweetmatcha by sweetmatcha | harrison, NY
Mar 18, 2016

I think so but would prefer it to be just an icon there instead of having to mouse over it and then click on it.