Facebook has now launched the "Reactions," a new set of six emoji that will sit alongside the original thumbs-up.
The six emoji allow users to quickly respond with love, laughter, happiness, shock, sadness and anger. In September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted that the social network giant was working on a way to expand its famous "Like" button - not by adding the "dislike" option, but by making it way more empathetic, expressing sadness and other emotions.
Facebook has been resisted the pressure from "dislike" button advocacies for years. "Reactions" will be taking a different tack, allowing the users to use spectrum of emotions to be expressed while avoiding the up- and down-voting of posts just like on YouTube and Reddit. An overwhelmingly negative reaction to a post without an actual discussion taking place could alienate users and discourage them from sharing, something Facebook wants to avoid.
The new range of emotions could offer more than just defensive benefits. They let Facebook quantify the user's feelings with even more granularity, which could in turn help Facebook serve up ads that well-suited to the users, Wired reported.
Users can use them on updates from their friends, Pages they follow, and liked brands. Facebook's director of product Adam Mosseri stated that "Reactions" will be tested in only two markets for now, Spain and Ireland, countries whose friend networks tend not to extend beyond national borders. The two countries are ideal for closed test groups.
The new set of reactions will appear across both mobile and desktop versions of the app. To add a reaction, testers on mobile devices will long-press the "like" button while PC users will hover over it, according to CNET. An array of options will then pop up and then a post will note the number of each reactions received.