Reactions are very useful on Facebook since they allow you to show your ‘true’ emotion to a post which was not possible before since we had an arbitrary like button. Early this month, there were reports that Facebook was planning to add this to Messenger which included the highly requested dislike button.
Messenger Reactions
Messenger Reaction emojis will allow you to express your reaction to a post in your chat thread. Just like on Facebook, to express your reaction, press and hold on the message and select your reaction from the love, smile, wow, sad, yes and no emojis. The no emoji in this case is the dislike button and it makes its debut on Messenger and weirdly not on Facebook.
As the recipient of the reactions, you will be able to see the reactions people gave you at the lower corner of the message. Tapping on the emojis will show you how the people in your conversation reacted to your post. When someone reacts to a message you sent, you will be notified by a small animation as you are looking at the message.
According to Facebook, Messenger Reactions use Messenger emojis and will work in one to one conversations as well as group conversations.
Mentions
The other new feature is Mentions and this implementation sounds like what we have on Twitter. If you want to mention someone on Messenger, type the ‘@’ symbol or start typing the first few letters of the person’s name and select them from the list.
When you send mentions, they will be highlighted in the group (since this is intended for group conversations).
If a person is mentioned, they will receive a new kind of notification that will show that they were singled out specifically so that they are able to reply easily to the sender. This is something we’ve been using on Twitter or Telegram for a while now.
Reactions and Mentions will also be available for Work Chat in Workplace by Facebook so that team members in these organizations can work better. These features are being rolled out starting today and will be available globally in the coming days.
