Fifteen were excited when Mark Zuckerberg announced they were working on testing a “dislike” button at Facebook, but we did wonder about how well it would work in practice. It seems we’re on the same wavelength, as Facebook have scrapped the “dislike” feature entirely, and are now opting for six new ‘emoji’ characters in addition to the like button.
It’ll work something like this. Users can click on the like button to bring up the seven options shown below, then pick one of the empathetic emoji’s to portray their reaction to a particular post, picture, video, story etc. One is the original like button, and the other six are: Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad, and Angry.
Although this does seem to read like the cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, we actually think it’s a really good idea. Not only will it allow you to interact more with friends on your newsfeed, but it is also a chance for companies and business pages to gain a better understanding of how their content is being digested by the user. Not only will this encourage engagements between businesses and users, but this information will also help pages to tailor their content to their audience, meaning better quality content all around.
The feature is currently being tested in Ireland and Spain, with Facebook intending to analyse how well the chosen reactions perform. This means that it might still end up looking completely different to what we see above. But, despite that, this little nugget of information has far from quenched our thirst. We are eager to get our hands on this new reaction feature, and can’t wait to hear when Facebook will be launching it worldwide.