Reactions of the Day: So Facebook Isn't Giving Us a 'Dislike' Button. They Have Something Else in Mind.
We wish we could dislike this story on Facebook.
Turns out we were right to be suspicious when we told you Mark Zuckerberg hinted at a 'dislike' button for Facebook last month.
Instead, Facebook revealed to TechCrunch Oct. 8, that the social network planned to 'supercharge' the existing 'Like' button by giving users some extra options on how to react.
Today, Facebook is taking the wraps off what form the new Like may take. It is rolling out "Reactions," a new set of six emoji that will sit alongside the original thumbs-up to let users quickly respond with love, laughter, happiness, shock, sadness and anger.
Facebook tells us that the pop-up feature will first start out as a test in two markets only, Spain and Ireland, before it decides whether to tweak it and/or how to roll it out further.
...The new set of reactions will appear across both mobile and desktop versions of the app and on all posts in the News Feed — be they from friends, Pages/accounts you follow, or advertisers. ...The reactions will work simply enough. On mobile, the emoji will come up when you touch the like button on your screen; on desktop they will come up as you hover the mouse over the like or click on it.
TechCrunch shows it as such:
Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox even put up a video of what these Reactions will look like.
Today we're launching a pilot test of Reactions — a more expressive Like button. As you can see, it's not a "dislike" button, though we hope it addresses the spirit of this request more broadly. We studied which comments and reactions are most commonly and universally expressed across Facebook, then worked to design an experience around them that was elegant and fun. Starting today Ireland and Spain can start loving, wow-ing, or expressing sympathy to posts on Facebook by hovering or long-pressing the Like button wherever they see it. We'll use the feedback from this to improve the feature and hope to roll it out to everyone soon.
Posted by Chris Cox on Thursday, October 8, 2015