Facebook starts rolling out new ‘Reactions’ feature

Facebook users have reacted to this development by expressing their disappointment for not including the much anticipated dislike button which was clamoured for a year ago.

In a press release Facebook said, ‘Every day, people come to Facebook to discover what’s happening in their world and around the world, and to share all kinds of things, whether that’s updates that are happy, sad, amusing or thought-provoking. These new buttons essentially let users react to posts in more ways than just like them. “People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions” he said.

Facebook has been testing out Reactions for about a year in select markets.

Expressing on Facebook will be more emotion-loaded after Wednesday.

Facebook’s new reaction buttons consist of five animated emoticons that pop up when the “Like” button is held down on mobile devices. Initial reactions to Reactions has been positive, according to Krug, and “Love” has been the most popular. Instead of providing an equally inadequate dislike button, the social network is rolling out Reaction buttons to 1.5 billion users worldwide.

The familiar “like” button with a thumbs-up image will still be there, alongside the new emoticon icons.

In terms of the impact the new Reaction buttons will have on Pages, that’s still not totally clear. To use a Facebook reaction on your laptop or tablet, hover your cursor over the like button, and all six Facebook Reactions will be visible.

More than a year Facebook was conducting a global research including the groups and surveys to determine the reactions of people who are using stickers and would want to use most.

They also looked at user’s comments and posts, to see what emoticons people use.

“We will continue learning and listening to feedback to make sure we have a set of reactions that will be useful for everyone”, Krug added.