Facebook is embracing all kinds of feelings. The social media platform announced on Thursday, Oct. 8, that its dislike button is actually a set of emoji “reactions.”
The emojis will be featured next to the thumbs-up “like" button and include a range of emotions including love, haha, yay, wow, sad, and angry. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending how you view the controversial new feature — there’s no dislike.
The new feature is being tested first in Spain and Ireland. According to TechCrunch, Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s director of product, explained the two marketplaces were chosen because they both have largely national user bases without extensive international friend networks, so they work better as closed test groups. Ireland is English speaking, while Spain lets Facebook test out how well the textless icons work with non-English users.
By offering a wider range of emotions than just the like button, Mosseri said that companies will also be able to get more feedback from users.
“We’re excited to start this test, but understand that this is a big change, and one that we want to make sure to get right,” Facebook explained in a post. “So we’re starting by offering Reactions to Ireland and Spain, where people will be able to react to any post across Facebook – a post from a friend, advertiser, publisher, or business. Our goal is to show you the stories that matter most to you in News Feed. Initially, just as we do when someone likes a post, if someone uses a Reaction, we will infer they want to see more of that type of post. We will spend time learning from this initial rollout and iterate based on findings in the future.”
As for how the new feature will impact your page, Facebook acknowledges that they “see this as an opportunity for businesses and publishers to better understand how people are responding to their content on Facebook.”
Tell Us: Are you excited about the new feature?