Attention Facebook Users! Are you tired of not being able to express how you actually feel on Facebook posts, photos, etc.? Great news – Facebook is finally acknowledging that “like” is not the right sentiment for every occasion and is offering new options! Reactions, five emoting emojis, were rolled out to Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion users Wednesday.
You can choose from new emotions when commenting on a status update with the click of a button! Simply hold the “like” button on mobile OR hover over the “like” button on your desktop and five animated emojis pop up. The five reactions include love, haha, wow, sad, or angry to help express your reaction, and posts in News Feeds will now show a tally of each reaction – how many likes, loves, wows – a post gets.
Now, granted, the new reactions are not designed to capture the FULL range of human emotions. The addition of these five reactions allows Facebook to give people a fast and simple way to express thoughts or feelings in a positive, supportive way.
Facebook conducted research for more than a year, monitoring focus groups and surveys to help determine the emotions people most commonly want to express.
The winners were the five emoji that translated to cultures all around the world. One particular emoji, “yay,” was not used because it is not universal enough.
“We have been very intentional about really understanding what people are trying to communicate on Facebook right now and how can we make that easier,” said Tom Alison, engineering director of News Feed.
What do you think of the new reactions on Facebook?!
