Facebook’s ‘Reactions’ Feature Will Challenge The ‘Like’ Button

It looks like the testing period is nearly finished and the social network giant is prepared to officially roll out this new feature pretty soon. The new options were globally recognizable terms for the most-common comments to Facebook posts.

“If you’re an advertiser and you want to reach mass scale, you only have two options: Facebook and Google”, James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co., told Bloomberg Business News. Facebook now has 1.44bn monthly active mobile users; 934m daily active mobile users; and 823m people who ONLY use Facebook on mobile. As Re/code notes, this surge in video views implies a rise in ad revenue for Facebook from video ads namely because video ads are more costly.

Zuckerberg said that he had ruled out a dislike button because he was concerned it would cause negativity. Now, Bloomberg is reporting brand-new details about what the site is calling Reactions, and it seems like it will completely change how you scroll through your feed.

The first new reaction is an updated version of the traditional “Like” button.

TechCrunch speculated in October that Facebook was planning on a set of six emojis that will join the original “like” button to allow users to quickly respond with symbols that express those six aforementioned feelings.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg surpassed oil magnates Charles and David Koch to become the sixth wealthiest person in the world as the company’s stock soared 13%.

Apart from focusing on mobile, Facebook has been ramping up spending on what it calls “big bets”, including virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones to connect the remotest parts of the world to the Internet. Each Facebook user in the United States and Canada made the company an estimated $13.54 during the fourth quarter of 2015-an increase from $10.49 in the third quarter, the Washington Post reported.