Facebook has a knack of experimenting with the features often and the most talked about feature is the like button. It has become synonymous throughout the web of sharing or liking things. The button has won over several other sharing buttons like +1 from Google+ and sharing from Twitter. But Facebook now wants to give you more options on the like button or as they say officially "Reactions".
According to the Bloomberg report, Chris Cox the design lead of the Facebook team started working on the reaction buttons in 2015. There was a lot of confusion after incidents like Nepal Earthquake and Paris Attacks amongst users of the Facebook to use the 'Like' button for gruesome events like these.
Cox said,"It is hard to change the heart of the user experience. He said he had talked with Zuckerburg about this and he gave it a nod and said it will be a hard project.". Facebook will have reactions like sad, love, wow, haha, yay and angry apart from the like button to have more engagement and emotions from the user on various events. Yay was later rejected.
Facebook started experimenting with the like button by making some of the people in Facebook office react to the stories and studying their facial expressions. And after clubbing the various reactions in different categories they drilled down to the five reactions. It was reported in last October that Facebook is going to introduce a dislike button but that is not likely now.
The company will hide the reaction options under the like button, which users can long press and post. This means that some technology like Force Touch will have another use case to explore. Also, ad makers would have a lot of data to play with. For example, in a reaction to a result of the a sports event, they would know which bunch is happy and which bunch is sad. You can even say when a user is angry about a particular brand or a person.
After testing the feature in Spain and Ireland, it was introduced to the users in Chile, Cambodia, Portugal, Phillipiens. Now they are experimenting it in Japan. Cox said,"In Aisa there is already a sticker culture with Line and Hike". Facebook is going to roll out Reactions all over the world.
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