Facebook looking at ‘Like’ replacement with emotions, report says

The announcement comes shortly after Mark Zuckerberg said the company was looking for an alternative to the “Like” button.

Facebook is about to begin testing alternatives to its “Like” button and Irish users are to be among the first people in the world to have access to the new options.

According to Engadget, the social networking giant is set to starting rolling out the new emoji-based reactions for users in Ireland and Spain this week. Good old like remains, of course, but along with icons that show love, laughter, cheeky smiles, shock, anger and, well, we’re sure there’ll be an extensive/ever growing list of options. These emojis include a blushing face, angry face, sad face, surprised face.

The upcoming change is already long overdue, if you ask me, since there’s so much content being shared online, and you don’t necessarily want to approve of what’s being posted. Is this something you would like to see make its way onto Facebook?

There’s no news on when this new system will rollout to the wider Facebook service, but it’s typical of Facebook to test a new feature with a small sample audience before sending it live.

Apparently, the new Reactions system will apply to user posts and pages alike, and there’ll be a breakdown of which responses each post receives. They will appear across both mobile and desktop versions of the app and on all posts in the News Feed.

Over eleven years after it was first launched, it seems Facebook is finally doing something about it, if Endgadget in Spain is to be believed. “That doesn’t seem like the kind of community we want to create”.