Last year on a Townhall meeting, Mark Zuckerberg revealed to the audience that Facebook was working on a way to add a dislike button. This news spread quickly although it was later revealed that the functionality was way more than that.
The new features was called “Reactions” and it was to go beyond what the like button could do. There are some posts where liking the post is inappropriate in a way and these new reaction emojis would make it easy to empathize with the person.
The feature was being tested first in Spain and Ireland due to their “largely national user bases without extensive international friend networks.” Now Facebook has officially launched the feature where they describe the feature as follows:
“We are launching Reactions, an extension of the Like button, to give you more ways to share your reaction to a Facebook post in a quick and easy way.”
There are 5 new reaction emojis: Haha, Wow, Sad, Angry and Love. They are geared to make it easier for you to relate to a post. Facebook has plans for it in Newsfeed where they will monitor its use. Just like how the News Feed works, the more you use a particular reaction, the more content it feeds you which relates to the reaction.
For businesses with Pages, this will be an unique opportunity to understand the reaction of your audience on your posts or products. Page insights will reveal all that information about the various reactions that have been used by your audience.
We expect it to be rolled out slowly overtime and you bet it will make interactions more interesting on the News Feed.
