Skip to main content

Facebook rolls out Reactions button globally: you can now express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger

Feeling outraged, tickled or touched by something you spotted on Facebook? Now you can say so, after the social media giant added five new reactions to its basic "like" button.

"Like, love, haha, wow, sad or angry" -- the expanded "reactions" feature rolled out globally on Wednesday is designed to let users show a range of emotions.

Notably absent from the new emoticons is a "dislike' button, something sought for years by Facebook users, but which has been ruled out by the California company to avoid a barrage of hateful expressions.

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on his page, immediately drawing tens of thousands of "like," "love" and other expressions.

"Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years but not because people want to tell friends they don't like their posts. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions."

The reactions button currently doesn't appear to be rolled out to the web.

Reacting to 'reactions'
Facebook had been testing ways to add to the "like" button faced with complaints that it was sometimes inappropriate, especially in cases of tragic events.

"We've been listening to people and know that there should be more ways to easily and quickly express how something you see in News Feed makes you feel," product manager Sammi Krug said in a blog post.

"That's why today we are launching Reactions, an extension of the Like button, to give you more ways to share your reaction to a post in a quick and easy way."

The familiar "like" button with a thumbs-up image will still be there, alongside the new emoticon icons.
"We understand that this is a big change, and want to be thoughtful about rolling this out," Krug said.

"For more than a year we have been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most."

The expanded reactions feature had been tested in several markets and is now rolling out globally, Krug added.

The new reactions buttons were unveiled in October as a test project for Facebook users in Spain and Ireland.

The new buttons became a quick topic of conversation on Facebook and other social networks, with the hashtag #dislikebutton used by its proponents.

On Twitter, one user wrote,
"Thanks @facebook for all the new reactions except for literally the only thing I wanted #dislikebutton."

In contrast, user Diane Bjorling welcomed the new tools.

"As much as I used to want to see a thumbs down button... after seeing how such a button can create conflict.. I am happy with these 'reactions,'" she wrote.

Facebook member Greg Kreiger said the "angry" button was good enough for him.

"To the haters and naysayers who are asking where is a Dislike button: Hover over like and choose ANGRY," he wrote.

"Visually it works better than just having the words Dislike or whatever there. Get over it."

Introducing Reactions
Today is our worldwide launch of Reactions -- the new Like button with more ways to express yourself.

Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don't like their posts. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button. The result is Reactions, which allow you to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger. Love is the most popular reaction so far, which feels about right to me!

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...
Continue reading »

Flexible Camera Developed That Can Be Wrapped Around Objects

A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras. "Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. "We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984. Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide ...
Continue reading »

Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) Leaked in Press Images

The anticipated successor to the popular Samsung Galaxy J1, tipped to be called the Galaxy J1 (2016), has once again been leaked in images on the Web. While in the previous leaks we have seen the unannounced smartphone in its Black colour variant, the new leaked image shows the handset in two additional colour variants. The image tweeted by @evleaks on Monday shows the Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) smartphone in Gold and White colour variants. The design of the handset also fall in line with the models leaked in images previously. It is worth mentioning that the screen bezel seen in the image stay black in all the three colour variants. The smartphone is seen featuring a physical home button, along with a multi-window, and a back capacitive button on either side. At the back, the smartphone sports a camera at the centre with a LED flash and a speaker on either sides. Samsung is yet to announce the smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016)leaked in images last month as well...
Continue reading »