Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, announced or more like hinted that he is working to build on the “Like” button. However, do not get your hopes up, as he is not going to add the much requested “Dislike” button. Instead, Facebook will get emoji. Next to the like button, users will see the “Reactions” button.
“Reactions” are a set of six emoji that users can use to respond to people’s statuses. They include love, happiness, laughter, sadness, anger, and shock. Users in the United States will have to wait while users in Ireland and Spain test the emotion features, as Facebook will test this new feature there first.
From there on, they will decide if the new “Reactions” need any changes or tweaks. So, why choose only those two countries? Director of products at Facebook, Adam Mosseri, explained that both Ireland and Spain have several national users and few global friends. This will allow the company to test out the new set of emoji in a closed group setting. Moreover, Ireland speaks English whereas Spain speaks their native tongue, which will allow them to test the emoji with English speakers as well as foreign speakers.
When reports circulated about Facebook creating a “dislike” button, technology experts predicted that the social networking site would unlikely release the “dislike” button and would come out with an emoji feature instead.
The idea of letting users use reaction emoji is not new, as sites such
as Buzzfeed and social media network Path have already made them available. Users on those sites can respond to posts using a variety of different reactions.
Facebook plans to make the new set of emoji available on desktop and mobile versions. Users will be able to use them to respond to all the posts in their News Feed whether it is a post from their friend, an account or page they follow, or advertisers.
Right now, the social media site is not planning to incorporate them into Messenger or any other products they own. In the future, if emoji becomes a success on Facebook, the company might make the feature available for Instagram.
The company has made it extremely simple for users to use the set of reactions on touch screen devices. When you touch the “like” button, the emoji will come up while hovering or clicking on the “like” button on desktop will bring them up.
People on Facebook already communicate with each other using stickers, but the company wants to provide them with an easier and quicker way to respond to posts. As with the “like” button, users will not get the option to turn off people’s responses to a post. Even though the company considered providing users with this option, but eventually decided against it, fearing it might confuse some users who may think that something was wrong.
Are you excited for the new set of reactions to come to your country? If the tests prove successful, you will soon be able to express yourself using any of the six emoji.
Be the first to comment on "Facebook Will Add an Emoji Feature"